Featured Band: All Time Low

There’s always that one band you listen to in your early teen years that you never forget.

When I was 13, I discovered All Time Low and fell completely in love.

I usually like one or two songs by a band.  Four songs TOPS.

But All Time Low…they were different for me.

To date, they’ve recorded 4 albums and one EP.

The Party Scene (2005)

This album is no longer available. There are only 1,000 known CD copies.

EP: Put Up or Shut Up (2006)

So Wrong, It’s Right (2007)

Nothing Personal (2009)

They also released a “Straight to DVD” album of a live concert in New York City in 2010, along with a full-length DVD about their lives backstage and on the road.

In 2011, they released their latest album Dirty Work.

The album cover was also released in red.

They are the only band I’ve ever listened to that I have liked every single song they’ve written.  Well almost every song, I’m not a huge fan of three songs.  But other than that, I love all their music.

Until Dirty Work came out.

One thing I thought was absolutely fabulous about All Time Low, was that they never used autotune, except for one song (a version of “Coffee Shop Soundtrack”) that was CLEARLY supposed to sound super strange and synthesized.

Their latest album featured autotune and it was much more… pop that they used to be.  The lyrics were still pretty dynamic and poetic.  But they took on a co-writer for some reason.

Their three original albums are absolutely brilliant.  The lyrics make me want to laugh out loud they’re so beautiful and strange and wonderful.  Frontman Alex Gaskarth is truly a spectacular composer and lyricist.  So I have faith in him and I’m sure their next album will be back to their original marvelous magic.

Anyway, I’ve loved the band for a long time.  The music is catchy and fresh without being too pop.

And Alex just has the most magnificent, smooth, gorgeous voice.

Sunsets

No enhancements were made to these photos.

I love sunsets.  They’re in bad romances and lame, angsty teen novels, unforgettable movies, and great literary master pieces.  Artists and poets have colored miles of canvas and thousands of pages depicting and describing their radiant beauty.  Twilight (ironically the unfortunate name of another angsty teen novel) is an enchanting hour.  It is the time of day when all three of the great celestial entities exist together.  The sun sets, the moon rises and the stars just begin to emerge.

I took this in Kona, 2003:

Outrigger Keauhou Beach Resort, 2003

I’m lucky enough to live by the beach.  The bay we live near faces south instead of west, so the sun never sets in front of my house, except for a short time in one season.  All year, I look forward to winter sunsets.  As December rolls around, the sun inches slowly south on the horizon, sinking into the sea right over the Channel Islands.

Watching the sun drift below the horizon is something magical.  Magentas and violets, gentle oranges and golds twist and swirl around each other in and endless tide of brilliant color.  The water reflects the clouds and shatters their image in its turbulent surface, scattering the light and magnifying it by a thousandfold.

As nice as these pictures are, they don’t do a sunset justice.  In fact, this website dims their color and decreases the awesome clarity, the sharp, severe lines.  But even the full quality pictures do not compare.  If you have a free night and a full tank of gas, head down to the beach with a snack and a blanket.  Go, watch the day die in a magnificent show of luminescent color and blazing light.