“The absence of the band left me a little lost,” he continues. He’d been so used to the structure of his life revolving around band activities that he confesses to “waking up and not knowing what to do” without it. Jack, like his bandmates, welcomed the break, but rest quickly turned into restlessness. I’ve spent more of my years in this band than out of it. Honestly, things have felt a little suffocating for me in the band in the past, because All Time Low has been my whole life. I needed to step away and take a breather. “It felt like we’d been at it non-stop for so long. “I was exhausted when all of that finally ended,” the guitarist says. But its critical success had pleased the frontman (“All the reviews said we’d grown up, which was great to read,” he remembers), and All Time Low managed to extend the campaign with the release of the well-received pair of singles Everything Is Fine and Birthday.įor Jack, however, it had all become too much to handle. Last Young Renegade had been a departure in style, leaning more on alt-pop than the pop-punk sound the quartet – completed by guitarist Jack Barakat, bassist Zack Merrick and drummer Rian Dawson – made their name with. From the outside looking in, it would appear as though things were ticking along rather smoothly. Such a revelation might come as a surprise to the wider world. Soul-searching was needed in order to write what might be the most important album of their career. All Time Low found themselves at a crossroads when they sat down to begin work again last year, a situation that required consideration of what had paid off so well for them in the past, as well as reflection on the trying events of recent times. New album Wake Up, Sunshine, unveiled last month, is the ultimate result of that break, but its creation wasn’t one that came about purely because of recharged batteries. “That was the moment we realised we needed to hit reset on All Time Low.” If we’d sat down immediately after that campaign came to an end and tried to write a follow-up, I think the end result would’ve been terrible. If you’re tired and inspired, it’s not hard to keep pushing, but we were tired and uninspired at the end of the Last Young Renegade cycle. “This was the first time that we actually thought the next thing we needed to do was to take some time away, and put a pin in things. “My mind was occupied by the fact that, creatively, I didn’t know what the next step for All Time Low was,” recalls Alex, the band’s vocalist, guitarist and chief songwriter. The decision was made, therefore, to put everything on hold. Following what they describe as “pretty much 12 years straight on the road”, enthusiasm had been replaced with near-complete burn-out. Calling it quits wasn’t necessarily on the cards, but still, the band had no idea where they were going next. This stark admission comes as he reflects upon the culmination of All Time Low’s campaign for their last album, 2017’s Last Young Renegade. “If I’m being completely honest,” Alex Gaskarth begins, “our hearts weren’t in it.”
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