The All-American Rejects Return with 'Send Her to Heaven'
The 2000s was an idyllic time: social media had begun connecting the world, Apple brought us iTunes and iPods that changed how we listened and shook the music industry, and the music was rad and The All-American Rejects were at the center of that. Often times, you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing one of their songs; Dirty Little Secret, Swing Swing, Move Along, It Ends Tonight, and of course Gives You Hell. Following the release of their last record, "The Beekeeper's Daughter," they went radio silent, the result of being spread across the country and entering a new stage of life. After releasing "Sweat" in 2017, fans proved that they were still ready and waiting.
After weeks of teasers and cryptic messages, they've given fans a 3-song single released via Epitaph Records (listen here). Written 2-3 years ago and recorded with various producers, the band has created a dynamic compilation where each song is given its own life. Guitarist Mike Kennerty describes the process, “We recorded each of these songs on their own and didn't think of them as a package. We just took each song and went to a different producer to see what we would come up with. Because of the way we went about it, I think we created a diverse group of songs that might not have happened if we did it the way we've always recorded in the past.”
Although the original idea was that these songs wouldn't be released together, frontman Tyson Ritter describes how though they sound different, they truly belong together, “I think these songs do have a through line and not only because these songs were written during the same period of time.” The first track "Send Her to Heaven" was the result of a co-writing session with Rivers Cuomo of Weezer and recorded with Tony Hoffer (Beck, OK Go). An important element that the band also returned to was the act of recording together and playing off that relationship, “I feel like so many songs today are recorded as overdubs,” Nick Wheeler (guitar) explains, “with this song we actually got in a room together as a band again and recorded most of it totally live.”
Despite rumors of the band breaking up or calling it quits, The All-American Rejects have returned to give us a new generation of music and this promise: “As much as we might have going on in our lives, the one thing that we can all agree on with The All-American Rejects is that we're never gonna stop doing this.”
