What Happened to The All American Rejects Vocals?

Posted September 9th, 2009 by Robert

This is not an album review. It’s a serious question: What happened to The All American Rejects vocals? Whether you like them or not, you can probably agree that they’re a modern pop-punk-ish rock band with radio-friendly songs. They had three pretty massive radio songs from their 2005 release “Move Along“: Dirty Little Secret, Move Along, and It Ends Tonight. All three had tight production, big drums, surgically edited guitars, and…big, up-front, bright vocals. And let’s not forget their first single Swing Swing from 2002.

Not the case with their next release, 2009′s “When The World Comes Down“. The vocals are buried, from the first song forward. I’m not talking about radio-loud vocals versus the regular vocal levels we were used to in the 90′s. I’m talking muddy and poor quality. The singing is alright, but the vocal mix is, in my opinion, not good.

There are some other interesting mix things going on, mainly with the drums. No Chris Lord-Alge / Ben Grosse / Mike Shipley clicky and punchy kick drum samples or smack and crack snare samples. The kick and snare sounds on the AAR album are dryer than Demetri Martin in the Sahara. But I kinda like it. It’s a departure from the expected modern rock drum sounds. The guitars are pretty massive too, I think partly stemming from the precise editing of driving parts, and distorted bass filling up the low end similar to Weezer’s “Pork and Beans“.

That can’t save the vocals though. Okay so the first single, “Gives You Hell“, has fairly decently mixed vocals. But the rest do not. Even the first track, “I Wanna“, starts out with vocals that are masked by heavy guitars. The chorus is blech. But could have been yeeeah. Eric Valentine mixed this album, and has worked on albums for Taking Back Sunday, Maroon 5, and Good Charlotte, all “vocal up” bands. I’d be interested to hear his take on this, because the rest of the instruments sound great.

I’m an aspiring badass mix engineer, and hope that one day someone will ask me what happened to the vocals on an otherwise great-sounding album. Until then, I’ll hope Eric drops me a line.

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  • christhesoundguy
    I haven't heard the album - make that quite clear here. But let me toss out this possibility. Maybe they wanted to "go in a new direction and get away from that pop sound." In this case, the engineer's fingers are tied. I'm probably just echoing "Ben's" comments.
  • I'd agree with you Chris if the 'direction' was clearer...take a listen to the tracks I've linked to in the article if you get a chance. I'd be excited by a true change of direction, but the rest of the instruments are still mixed in current modern pop/rock style.

    Thanks for reading!
  • Look, you're going to hate me for this.

    I actually enjoy many of the AAR songs you're talking about. Then I saw a live show of them on Palladia (HD music channel). It's unfortunate, but much like many modern artists, All-American Rejects CAN'T SING. Seriously. Their live vocals SUCKED (even after being mixed & mastered for TV). It truly disappointed me.

    As long as the music industry keeps serving up people who can't consistently sing, you're going to get occasional crappy vocals on albums. After what I heard, I imagine they had to bury mediocre vocals on several tracks. Maybe folks can do a great job covering up bad vocals most of the time, but some of the time, it's gonna show through.
  • pimpfresh
    Rob, you're going to hate me for this but...now that we've gotten blog going I can admit that the Top 40 article was written to get a reaction. I was only 50% serious. With that out of the way, I can now candidly trash a top 40 band:)

    I'm definitely a fan of AAR, and I saw both the Pallidia concert and a performance from 2005 when Move Along had just come out. They were both absolutely horrendous. I turned them both off. Their songs are awesome, but their album performance is definitely a miracle of modern production.

    Regarding the mix, the vocals aren't just buried in the mix, the recording quality sucks. It sounds like 128kb mp3 was dumped into a pro-tools session. But unlike Dyson, I'm also disappointed by the overall sonic quality and production on the album. I've heard a chorus of people applauding them for trying something new on this album. To me it sounds like they just took shortcuts.
  • Yes, you're terrible. Thanks for the update - it saves me from feeling like I really need to get around to continuing the flame war on that other post. As much as I disagreed, it's hard to find time for long-winded blog comments with a 1-month old daughter at home.

    On the up side, I won't have to publicly shun you for your musical tastes any more. :)
  • Not only do I not hate you for it, I agree with you 100%. I have absolutely no expectations when it comes to live vocal performances from modern rock bands. I know (and use) the techniques to make them sound awesome in the studio, and am aware of the difficulties in reproducing pristine vocals live. I'm also aware that this is not necessarily a good thing for the music industry, but that's a different story.

    With respect to the AAR album, I don't have a problem with the vocal performances, though they're not as good as some previous material I've enjoyed by them. My problem is with the placement of the vocals in the mix, and the sound of the vocals, which has less to do with the performer and more to do with the production team. It would be one thing if the whole sound was poorly mixed, but in my opinion it's only the vocals that don't sound up to snuff.

    It is possible that they had to bury mediocre vocals, but my feeling is that something else is at play. Perhaps the band or the production team wanted to try something new, but why be subtle about it? AAR is (are?) a modern pop punk radio-friendly band, and the rest of the instruments fit that mold. The average listener would not pick up on the vocals being poorly mixed, so unless they're trying to subliminally introduce the listener to softer vocals, I think any effort put behind the muddy vocal mix is for naught.

    Thanks a lot for reading and responding, this is the type of dialog I was hoping to engage in.
  • I went back and listened to the album again. I listened once when it first came out... enough to decide I didn't really care for it and left it at that.

    The first half of this album is musically sparser than their other material I know, AND it sounds like they felt the need to push the upper bounds of Tyson Ritter's vocal range further than usual. It put them in uncharted territory and yeah, they don't handle it well. How do you handle a delicate voice with not much background instrumentation? Mid-way through the album (Breakin', Believe), the instrumentation fills out a bit and I think the mix gets less-bad, in my opinion.
  • Ben Dover
    I like the album. They went back instead of going ahead. Everyone's trying to get ahead right now and they very easily could've put out a record like the new All Time Low or Boys Like Girls albums (really compressed and bright) but instead they want back to dryer vocal tracks. Some of the BGV's in Breakin' sound like some Tom Petty to me. I think they wanted to make simple vocals that would be easy to replicate live. I think that was the goal of the whole record, to sound real and natural. I like to play Devil's Advocate.
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