Unglued Reviews

All Time Low play straight-up pop-punk with no aspirations to reinvent the genre, or do anything more on their second full-length album (their first for Hopeless Records) than write catchy, buoyant anthems like they’re direct descendants of Blink-182 and Green Day (if not the Descendents themselves).

Remembering Sunday is the most adventurous track, bringing acoustic guitar and strings into the mix, plus guest vocals by Juliet Simms. But it’s the exception on an album that mostly relies on familiar-sounding songs like Vegas. Listeners have heard this all before – in fact, opening cut This Is How We Do begins like a close cousin of Wrong Way by Over It, and I keep finding myself singing the words from Farewell’s First One On The Blog over the breakdown in Shameless.

Clever lyrics can often lift this type of music above the crowd, but wordplay on this album is limited to the likes of “Boys, raise those glasses, girls, shake those – - get up! Get up!” on This Is How We Do or the title of Holly (Would You Turn Me On). The subject matter also retreads all too familiar territory, celebrating good times or mourning failing relationships. Come One, Come All is a welcome change of topic, railing against a radio DJ whose “playlist is killing me” (presumably he wasn’t playing enough Good Charlotte).

But one senses All Time Low aren’t even trying to break new ground, and moments like Let It Roll and the infectious stuttering chorus of The Beach press all the right buttons for undemanding listeners seeking a party soundtrack that’s easy to sing along to. Plus, bonus points for the amusing copyright warning that pirates will “have their homes burned to the ground by the band”.

Owen Heitmann