All-American Rejects, and the World Comes Down
Oklahoma’s All-American Rejects are happy to be releasing their new album Tuesday, When the World Comes Down, and they’re quite excited to find out how people will react to their latest offering.

Best known for hit singles like “Dirty Little Secret” and “It Ends Tonight”, AAR bring it on again with catchy songs like “Gives you Hell”. Fans are already raving about this single!

They have been touring like mad to lead up to their new album, and plan on continuing well into next year. “Our tour is going really good. We haven’t been on one for about two years so we have been pouring everything into this new record, When the World Comes Down. It feels really good to get back out there and play some shows, and play some new songs especially. All the shows are starting to sell out so I guess all the kids still like us and still want us around so that is a good sign,” says Nick Wheeler, one of the founding members of All-American Rejects.

“We have done Orlando which was a blast; Toronto and Detroit — both were amazing. Either they really liked the show or they were just happy to get in from the snow, I’m not sure,” Nick laughs. “… California. We actually did a bit of writing while in San Francisco for the record so it’s cool to go back and revisit this time with a sense of accomplishment instead of the Oh-My-God, insecure feelings of is this album going to come out as good as last time.”

Of course they will take a break for the holidays as they did for Thanksgiving. Apparently Mike threw a big shin-dig at his house for all the crew and the other bands who didn’t get to go home for that holiday. Nick says, “That is always a good time. My Dad does barbecued chili and he brings the left-overs to Mike’s house later that night. The first show after Thanksgiving is one where we don’t move very much.”

All-American Rejects were recently selected as a nominee for the state rock song in Oklahoma. “We did not apply for the Oklahoma state rock song, but it is kind of cool because there are a lot of great rock bands from there like Flaming Lips and Hanson. I think we are in the top ten which is cool. I don’t know for sure when they are announcing it. It is suppose to be for the 101 anniversary of Oklahoma so maybe then.”

We’ll find out Spring 2009 whether or not they were chosen for that!

The new year will also bring on even more touring for AAR. “We have touring coming up in the new year. It isn’t going to stop for the next couple of years, I hope. We’ll be out there for a couple more years touring this record. So far we have some overseas stuff going on in the beginning of the year and in the spring in the US we are doing the Honda Civic Tour. I am sure the summer will be chock full of festivals.”

Even though they will perform at festivals, these aren’t Nick’s favorite type of venues to actually attend himself. “The Reading Festivals are great, but personally I would never go to them because I hate camping. But I think it is really cool that so many people love to spend an entire weekend listening to music and seeing live bands. The US is doing a little of that for the younger generation which always goes over pretty well. We haven’t gotten to do Lollapalooza, and it is generally a cluster-f***, but the energy is great, and if they did invite us, we would love to play it.”

Getting to the album, Nick tries to decide which song he likes the most. “It is hard for me to tell which song is my favorite. We are playing three or four songs of the new album on this tour, obviously ‘Gives You Hell’, the tour is actually called ‘The Gives You Hell Tour’. A song called ‘Mona Lisa’, which we made a little home movie video for which you can see on whentheworldcomesdown.com or allamericanrejects.com; one or the other I am not sure. We are also playing ‘I Wanna’, which is really fun to play live.

“There are a couple of songs that we haven’t tried to tackle since we recorded them. I think they are going to be the anthems. One is a song called ‘Damn Girl’ and the other is ‘The Wind Blows’, which is actually the last song on the record and the last song written for the record too. It was kind of pieced together. We really did not even have a chorus when we started recording it, but it came together and is a real special moment on the album.”

Some of the songs on the album were not so easy to bring to life. Nick explains. “’The Wind Blows’ was the hardest song to put together because it was actually written a couple of years ago on the road between Japan and Australia, and we were actually writing it for somebody else that we weren’t even going to use. We were kind of writing out of the box because we weren’t doing it for the album so it kind of came out way different. It was built very thin and organic and is built around Chris playing several variations of a part and building it up on tape. That was kind of the theme of this record … was to keep it real organic and do what was best for the songs. We went with a lot of gut reaction and spontaneity, but if we over thought too much we ended up going someplace that wasn’t right, so we did a lot of that on this record, which was cool. ‘The Wind Blows’ has a lot of that and it was the song that probably took the most time since it was written over two years ago.”

How did this “Wind that Blows” become a track on their album if it was supposed to be for someone else? “Eric Valentine, who produced When The World Comes Down, was given a demo of this song. We had totally forgotten about it, but Jeff provided him with every song we had written that he had. It was called ‘Alone Again’ then, and had a different chorus. He was like, ‘what is this song’ and I said ‘what! I totally forgot about that and you gave him that song.’ We were never stoked on the chorus so Ty came up with this chorus which just kills.

“I kind of fought it a little bit because of the vibe we had when it first came together and when we were in the studio it was just in pieces and it seemed like this huge undertaking to make this song happen in the timeline we were given to finish this record. But then, we just had fun with it and it came together really naturally, and turned out really special, and we made it us. It was a real departure for us, but so were a lot of other numbers on this record too. We had a lot of fun creating new songs and using different sounds and different methods of recording. Just trying to keep it fresh for us most importantly,” Nick revealed.

The band’s album already has a video out for the single “Gives you Hell”, and it has met with fan approval. “The original creative idea for the ‘Gives You Hell’ video, and for all our videos, has pretty much come from ideas from directors. Mark Web directed this one and he also did the ‘Move Along’ video. Once the idea is there we have a full hand in the process. In ‘Move Along’ we were actually sitting in the editing booth with him finalizing the edit. This time we are kind of multitasking with rehearsing for the tour, but we are very hands-on with trying to make the best video we can make in trying to get the idea across along with the director. It was all great and a really fun video to make,” he said.