All Time Low

IN SHEER DEFIANCE OF THEIR VERY NAME, ALL TIME LOW HAVE DELIVERED A RIVETING CAREER HIGHLIGHT WITH THEIR ENORMOUS EIGHTH ALBUM, WAKE UP, SUNSHINE. IT’S A MIND-BENDING LABYRINTH OF EVERYTHING THE FOURSOME EXCEL AT, FROM BOOMING POP-PUNK BANGERS TO SHIMMERY SYNTHPOP EARWORMS. LEAD GUITARIST JACK BARAKAT LETS US IN ON ITS SUMMERY SECRETS.

It’s hard to believe All Time Low were ever the underdogs of the pop-punk scene. We remember them fondly when they were dorky kids with overly straightened hair, wailing to us about how they had our picture and they were coming with us (though my name’s Matt, dude, not Maria – I’ll still count you in though). But even then, they seemed larger than life – who’d’a thought a decade of growing up would lead them to where they are now, packing arenas full of devotees from all walks of life, topping charts the world over and inspiring a whole new generation of bands themselves?

Now bonafide legends of the radio-pop circuit, All Time Low are heading beyond the four-chord pit food they cut their teeth on, expanding their horizons and experimenting with a swathe of new and exciting sounds. Such is unquestionably true on their momentous eighth LP, the bright and bombastic Wake Up, Sunshine – an album that guitarist Jack Barakat says surprised even them.

What makes Wake Up, Sunshine the definitive All Time Low album?

One thing that really stands out to me is is that there’s songs on this record that could belong on each one of our past records – but somehow it still sounds like an updated version of our band. It’s the most well-rounded record we’ve ever done – y’know, it has a little bit of

Dirty Work on there, a little bit of Don’t Panic, a little bit of Last Young Renegade… It’s got a little bit of all that, so if you’ve been a fan of our band at any point, I really think that this record has something for you. Which is kind of a unique feat to accomplish. I don’t even think we set out to accomplish that, but since all of us worked on the record together, that’s just what happened.

This record is a great follow-up to Last Young Renegade because it maintains the experimentalism and the exploration of new sounds that you took advantage of with that record, but it’s also just a solid pop-punk record as well. How do you reckon with that balance, taking stylistic leaps in new directions while maintaining the core personality of what All Time Low has always been to fans?

I think it’s the fact that we wrote the record together, y’know? We lived in the same house and we were all throwing around ideas. It was great to have all of us be together in the same place while we were writing the songs – and working with a producer like Zakk Cervini, who’s got all these fresh sounds, and also came from a place where he grew up as an

All Time Low fan. I think it was a mix of those two things that made for this explosion of raw energy, which led to us being the best version of All Time Low that we’ve ever been.

Do you find that because of how closely involved you all were and how collaborative the process ended up being, that you’re able to connect with Wake Up, Sunshine a little more than you can with your earlier records?

I really do. And y’know, the true test will come once we start playing the songs live. Even when we were in rehearsals, learning the songs together and going over “Some Kind Of Disaster” and “Sleeping In”, you could already feel this sense of camaraderie and connection between all of us as bandmates. These parts are all really special to us because we all contributed to and wrote them ourselves. And I’m not saying it was any better than it has been in the past, or shooting down the people we worked with on earlier records – this time it felt just a little more special than usual.

I get the sense that this record represents All Time Low coming full circle, in a way – going back to the basics of how the band worked when you started out, but with the experience and the knowledge you have as adults.

You’re completely right. I’d be hesitant to call it a “throwback record” or anything like that, but there were certain things that came into play that kind of put us in the mindset of where we came from. Those things obviously include us writing a record together for the first time since Nothing Personal, and also rerecording that album last year and getting back into that youthful mindset. And so we almost had this newfound energy as a band, where we felt like we were starting over in a way.

So you wrote and recorded this album between Rian’s [Dawson, drums] studio in Nashville and a rental house in Palm Springs. What made you guys want to take that approach as opposed to a more traditional studio process?

The interesting thing about that Nashville writing session was that it was just Alex [Gaskarth, vocals] and Rian. Alex just happened to be in Nashville and Rian owns a studio there, so Alex was in there writing songs, and he ended up coming up with some of those ideas that created the bones for this record.

And I don’t think he even had the intent of starting an All Time Low record – he was just like, “Oh, I’m gonna write some songs!” We weren’t planning on doing a record this soon, because Alex was doing Simple Creatures and I was doing Who Hurt You; we were taking our first quote-unquote “hiatus” as a band, and it was almost like an accident with the way Alex started coming up with these songs.

Once he came out of those sessions and sent us those ideas, we were like, “Well, holy shit. Let’s go make a record now!” And that’s when we decided to rent a house in Palm Springs and go off to write a whole record – we had a plan and a very, “Let’s go get this thing done” type of mentality. But there was no pressure, y’know? We didn’t want there to be this stress of, “We have to go make an All Time Low record,” walking into the studio at 9AM and leaving at 5PM. We wanted it to be more like, “Let’s go live and breathe this thing and create something special.”

So were you surprised at how quickly it all came together?

Dude, literally every day, we’d step back and go, “Holy shit, is this really happening right now?” It was just kind of like this happy accident where Zakk Cervini had a random opening of free time and Alex was like coming up with shit right, left and centre. I was in the songwriting mindset too because I’d just written an EP for Who Hurt You, so the ideas were just flowing.

A month in the desert later, and we really had the whole thing finished – I’m talking, like, almost mixed. It was genuinely surprising how fast it all came together. All Time Low didn’t have a plan to come back this soon – it’s just that the songs were there and the record was done, so we were like, “Alright, well I guess we’re getting back together now.”

What axes were you swinging around that living room for this record?

We were using Benji Madden’s old guitar. Benji gave Zakk the red one that he used on all the Young And The Hopeless stuff, and it’s f***ing beautiful. We used that on every song. And as a fanboy of his, it was f***ing insane using Benji Madden’s guitar on our record.

And the one he used on The Young And The Hopeless, too, what a f***ing iconic record!

It was so full-circle for us, because y’know, that’s the record that we grew up on as well. We grew up on Good Charlotte and Zakk grew up on All Time Low, and now we’re all working together on an All Time Low album with the Good Charlotte guitar. It was unbelievable.