Day 31: The All-American Rejects – Move Along
Album cover courtesy of Interscope Records
I saw something horrible today. Apparently there’s a bit of an emo renaissance going on. That in itself is not horrible, the horrible part is hearing that people are saying that to emo night at a club is like when our parent’s generation used to go to ‘80s nights. Emos were a thing like 20 years ago. 20 years! My god.
To honour the budding emo revival, I wanted to listen to something of the Abercrombie store emo variety that I hopefully hadn’t heard since I was a kid, so I went for the All-American Rejects. Unfortunately these men exited my life right around the time I let my side fringe grow out, but they were back on my radar again earlier this year when they started their latest tour across America.
Released in 2005, Move Along is the sophomore album by the All American Rejects, and it definitely scratches the itch that I was hoping it would. I don’t know if it’s just the nostalgia of the album, but something about it is warm and comforting. It’s probably because of the memories of a time when you thought about nuclear war significantly less, but you know, nevertheless.
It's very much a quintessential pop punk album that sounds like it was released in 2005, but that’s not a bad thing. I could see myself at a millennial ‘80s night having a great time with these songs. Songs like “Stab My Back” and “It Ends Tonight” still sound pretty good, so long as you can appreciate them as a product of their time. And on that topic, I feel for the poor girl who was told by a member of this band that they’ve written a song about her and it turned out to be “Dirty Little Secret”. Seriously, yikes.
The All-American Rejects engaged on their most recent tour saying that they’re a band for the common man, and that they’re not trying to sell you gigs with massive Ticketmaster fees and $25 parking, so they offered a form through which you could get them to play at your party for free. They paid $50,000 out of pocket to do it, and their gamble paid off: they went viral many times over, and now they’re opening for the Jonas Brothers on a tour across the US. As far as ways to do a comeback go, that one is stellar.
Move Along is a perfectly decent album and I have a lot of time for any artist who takes the time out of their day to announce that they don’t like what Ticketmaster has done to gigs. It’s a 6.5/10.