* Oklahoma quartet releases fourth studio album
* Ten years after debut album, band embraces softer side
By Piya Sinha-Roy
LOS ANGELES, April 3 (Reuters) – After a decade of carefree,
feel-good pop-rock, the All-American Rejects are finally growing
up and embracing their softer side in their new album, “Kids In
The Street,” out this week.
Despite ten years of making music and touring together, it
wasn’t until recording this fourth album that the Oklahoma
quartet — frontman Tyson Ritter, drummer Chris Gaylor and
guitarists Mike Kennerty and Nick Wheeler — finally learned
their identity as individuals and as a band.
“This (album) is definitely the bravest thing we’ve done,
but it’s also the first time we felt brave enough to do it,”
said Wheeler.
“Kids In The Street” sees the Rejects move away from the
carefree pop-rock sound of their past three albums, reserving
their trademark sound only for the record’s cheeky lead single,
“Beekeeper’s Daughter,” and the country-rock inspired “Walk Over
Me.”
The rest of the album marks a coming of age for the band,
especially frontman Ritter, 27, who drew on his own
relationships and life experiences on tracks such as “Bleed Into
Your Mind,” “I For You,” and the second single “Kids In The
Street.”
“That reflection really brought back my identity of who I
am, as a man who has crossed that 25 mark. The quarter-life
crisis is something I think can cripple us all, but to find out
what life’s about, you have to go through it,” said the singer.
The band have recruited a few other artists to collaborate
with them on their latest record, including British singer Mika
on “Heartbeats Slowing Down” and fellow Oklahoma musician Audra
Mae on three of the tracks including “Fast & Slow”.
But they dislike the current trend of musicians
collaborating for what they feel are purely commercial purposes.
“We found a couple of really unique voices that had a home
on those songs, and it was because we come through a lot of
people, and unfortunately, we’ve picked the ones that aren’t
your Taylor Swifts, but they’re great talents,” said 31 year-old
Wheeler.
“We’re into something that we believe. And when the
opportunity arises where we believe in the collaboration, then
we’ll embrace it whole-heartedly,” added Ritter.
A DECADE OF THE REJECTS
The All-American Rejects emerged into the music scene at a
time when the mainstream industry was dominated by alternative
rock bands such as Limp Bizkit, Blink 182, The Offspring and Sum
41 – bands which have faded from the spotlight in recent years.
The Rejects however have maintained a steady output of music
and tours, producing a new record every few years and finding
themselves with a hit single from each of their albums — 2002’s
“Swing, Swing,” “Dirty Little Secret” from the 2005 record “Move
Along” and “Gives You Hell” from their 2008 album “When the
World Comes Down.”
“Gives You Hell,” a raucous post-breakup song, gained the
largest chart success for the band and propelled them into the
mainstream.
“We take our time to write another great record, that’s why
this is four records in ten years,” said Ritter.
“If we were going to chase some kind of success, we would
have jumped on it right after ‘Gives You Hell.’ But we wanted to
make sure we were finally writing a record that people could
listen to from top to bottom and feel like it was a journey.”
Over the past decade, the band have seen the music industry
evolve drastically, especially with the impact of online mediums
that allow artists to be discovered in new ways outside of a
record label.
“Every time we put out a record, everything’s different.
There’s more social media outlets and radio’s totally
different,” said Wheeler.
The band have embraced the growing number of social media
platforms, but say there’s nothing like the “rock and roll
decadence” of forging a following the hard way.
“I would have been bummed if we didn’t get to experience
what we have back in the day, getting an event, playing shows,
going out to sell demo tapes, cause that was the only way we
could gain fans,” said Wheeler.
With more than 2.3 million fans on Facebook and 52,000
followers on Twitter, All-American Rejects have built a steady
fan base on social media but are hesitant to expose themselves
completely.
“We didn’t start this because we wanted to open up our
personal lives, we just wanted to open up our hearts in our
songs and that should be good enough,” said Ritter.
(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy: Editing by Jill Serjeant)
