ALBUM REVIEW: Sandbox – The All-American Rejects
It’s been 14 years since we last had a full album from pop-punk legends THE ALL-AMERICAN REJECTS. More than a decade later however, they are back with their latest album, Sandbox. A fun album that retains the true spirit of the band and hasn’t lost any of their infectious energy that we’ve come to know and love over the years.
Ushering in this new era of the band is Easy Come, Easy Go, a fun surf rock style song that mixes some fun slow bits with a great grungey chorus that isn’t too dissimilar to a song by WEEZER, just much better. The chorus is a fun ear worm that sticks with you for quite a bit and will have you shouting along with “easy come, easy go!” as soon as you hear it. It’s a fun showcase of frontman Tyson Ritter showing off some great vocal range. It’s a great start to the album. Get This continues this fun easy listening style that we’ve come to know and love with the band and you can’t help but feel that this is going to be a great summer album as it’s made for listening to when basking in the sun. The big sound shines through again with the distorted grungey guitar that drives the song to its victorious ending. Search Party! packs an emotional punch with a whiff of melancholy and yearning for simpler times. Eggshell Tap Dancer is another song that takes things slow but packs a great chorus to make up for this.
Green Isn’t Yellow is one of the album’s highlights. It shows the band abandoning their boisterous sound for a simple and lovely sounding acoustic line which gives the album some new found confidence with a GASLIGHT ANTHEM-esque style of singing and musicality. Up next is the titular song, Sandbox. After some fairly quiet and subdued songs, the band build their way back up to the huge sound which is a welcome return, particularly when the sumptuous bass line by Ritter bursts in to launch the song back into some pop-punk madness, proving to be another highlight on this album as the melancholic nature of the album takes ahold yet again. Another highlight comes next with King Kong, this time abandoning that melancholic feeling and embracing a more hopeful nature which works as a good juxtaposition to the lyrics which detail having those people in your life that always let you down. It shakes off the shackles of those people however and looks at making your own way in life and warning those that they can indeed bite back harder. It’s a fun euphoric and cathartic moment. Clothesline follows and continues the upbeat nature of the record.
As we come to Lemonade, and after a plethora of huge and great sounding tracks, this does kill the album’s momentum slightly due to it feeling like a rehash of a few songs that came before it. There is a fun fuzziness and scruffy feel to this song however that does add some forgiveness to the song. For Mama is a beautiful, mournful track that has some great sounding brass music that bleeds through over the somber acoustic line which is combined wonderfully with some impressive harmonies as we hear Tyson Ritter reminiscing about loss and the yearning of wanting more moments with those he has lost. It’s a stunning piece of music that proves to be head and shoulders amongst all the other tracks on Sandbox. Staring Back At Me ushers in a darker tone for its finale as it finishes the album in style. There is quite a circus feel to it, the swirling tunes do feel like a descent into madness, and in the last 14 years since the last album by THE ALL-AMERICAN REJECTS, we may very well have done.
This is a welcome return for the band. Looking at how the band wishes to stay in their own proverbial Sandbox so to say, however, the issues surrounding the box that go in the world today keep leaking in making it all impossible to ignore. It’s a great effort from the band and will surely go toe to toe with some of their iconic songs from the past and become some modern pop-punk classics.
Rating: 8/10
Sandbox is out now via Self-Release.
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