All Time Low
Interview & Words by: Anya Duncan
All Time Low’s Alex Gaskarth on Independence, Intention, and the Community That Carries Them.
“It’s fun to experience your music again through everyone else’s eyes.” When All Time Low, long-standing titans of the pop-punk genre, announced new music, speculation buzzed louder than ever. What does a band, two decades deep, sound like in the present day? For fans who grew up on the melodic angst and emotional introspection of their early catalogue, the announcement of their independence from any major label added further intrigue. What would this version of All Time Low sound like? What would they say?
Fittingly, the album was titled Everyone’s Talking!... because they were. About creative freedom. About longevity. About what comes next for a band formed 22 years ago in a Baltimore basement. The answer (or at least the opening statement) arrived in the form of Suckerpunch, a track soaked in both the nostalgia of where they began and the clarity of where they’re heading.
“You know, I think there is a lot to be said about nostalgia these days,” Alex Gaskarth muses, thoughtfully unpacking the emotional current running beneath their new song. “Given that the themes of the video were about retelling the story of a legend, we framed this character out as a guy in his older years, looking back and reflecting on the glory days. We thought some good iconography around that to tie it together would be to reimagine one of our old logos.”
A skull and crossbones (one of the band’s earliest symbols) appears front and centre during the music video’s opening credits. A wink, perhaps, to fans who’ve been around long enough to remember its first run. To some this visual felt like a declaration from the band: we’re reclaiming our sound, and we’re bringing you all with us. “We get to drive this 100 percent,” Alex explains. “That way, all the successes mean that much more. Even all the shortcomings or shortfalls, if there are to be any, we know that we can own those and then course-correct ourselves, rather than being like, ‘who messed it up?’”
There’s freedom in that level of authorship, and Gaskarth is clearly thriving in it. With full creative licence, he’s increasingly shaped not just the sound, but the vision of All Time Low’s new music, too. The recently released video for The Weather is yet another testament to this evolving visual language, co-directed by Gaskarth himself. “I think it’s been our last four or five videos that have been concepts I came up with and then either directed or co-directed,” he says. “I love being in that space because when I write a song, a lot of the time, I will imagine what a music video might look like for the song we’re writing in the moment.”
Owning every frame, every lyric, every idea comes with risk. But for Gaskarth, that vulnerability is part of the reward.
