All Time Low, Wake Up Sunshine
Fueled By Ramen

Releasing music can feel dangerous when you’re a band that’s had a solid beginning, especially when you’re a band as adored for your youthful frivolity and sunny lightheartedness as Baltimore icons All Time Low. Bands that have been formerly hailed as the kings of the scene, contemporaries of the kind of fanbase All Time Low have held on to, have had deflated descents into disregard with releases that lack emotion or spark (shed a tear for Fall Out Boy, folks). Even ATL themselves divided fans after their ‘big four’, but as we approach the release of Wake Up Sunshine, it’s clear that the same band we scribbled the lyrics of all over our school planners are firmly within reach. It’s an absolute blessing, for those of us emos whose teenhoods were soundtracked by ATL, that we get them to nudge us through adulthood too – and for younger fans too, that the ATL experience will be universally boppy.

All Time Low have altered their release schedule, singer Alex Gaskarth saying “people just want to dance. And these are dancing songs!” in a statement on twitter. We’re getting a steady, reliable trickle of straight bangers when nothing else in the world seems steady and reliable – and so far we’ve got Getaway Green, Some Kind Of Disaster, Sleeping In, and Melancholy Kaleidoscope to sink our teeth deep into. Melancholy Kaleidoscope, the latest offering, kicks off with a fast-paced guitar melody, before Gaskarth’s vocals take center stage, and the combination of the two is so delightfully All Time Low that it evokes a kind of manic nostalgia – not the kind of nostalgia that makes you sad and wistful, but the kind of nostalgia that floods your body with all the energy you’ve ever felt and DEFINITELY makes you want to get up and dance.

Getaway Green, Sleeping In, and SKOD, all incite similar responses. ATL have taken the youthful joy of their early albums, the energy and passion of a band writing for a blooming fan community and turning into scene icons from Dirty Work, Nothing Personal, and Don’t Panic, and the excitement of developing that started to flicker into existence in Future Hearts and Last Young Renegade, and they’ve mixed it all up until Wake Up Sunshine started to surface.

Wake Up Sunshine promises to be the uplifting album we all need right now, and All Time Low promise to be the band we’ll always have more than a big soft spot for. We can barely keep up – Melancholy Kaleidoscope only came out on Tuesday, but tonight they’ll be sliding Trouble Is our way too, so keep your eyes peeled!

Wake Up Sunshine is out April 3rd, and COVID-19 permitting, you can catch ATL this summer at Reading and Leeds festival! Tickets available here.