Hannah Dorval | Contributing Photographer

The Factory buzzed with energy as a crowd of millennials in their skinny jeans and Old Skool Vans eagerly anticipated All Time Low’s performance last week. For almost two hours, the 2000s pop-punk boy band made me forget that I was in the end unit of a Chesterfield, Missouri, strip mall on a random Tuesday. 

All Time Low is best known for its certified quadruple platinum single “Dear Maria, Count Me In,” which entered the Billboard Pop 100 at No. 86 in 2008, and its 2020 hit “Monsters,” the band’s first track to ever earn a Billboard radio chart No. 1. Now on tour promoting its newest album, “Everyone’s Talking!,” the band’s performance is tight: Frontman Alex Gaskarth’s vocals are just as dynamic live as they are recorded, and the rest of the band is reliable. The pop-punk show featured the band’s catchy hooks and melodies, and that classic pop-punk vocal quality (heavy on the California Vowel Shift) took center stage.

Unlike a standard rock show, which usually only features the band and not much else, All Time Low’s performance was silly and playful, engaging the audience throughout. Gaskarth spoke in between nearly every song, even pointing out someone dressed as the Lorax (“Thank you for speaking for the trees!” he said). The band’s vibrant stage setup was reminiscent of those giant parachutes physical education teachers used to pull out on Fridays in elementary school: Bright hues of red, green, yellow, and blue were everywhere. While most of the audience knew the lyrics by heart, retro lyric videos played on stage anyway. The four-piece band’s bright clothing and colorful instruments starkly contrasted its darker emo-pop openers: The Paradox, The Cab, and Mayday Parade. 

Throughout the show, I felt nostalgic for a band that I rarely listened to growing up. Maybe it was my new millennial friends who were reminiscing about their high school days when All Time Low tracks were constantly on rotation and at the very front of their CD wallets. While I was playing the latest Kidz Bop on loop in my pink Hello Kitty CD player, these people had already been bitten by the pop-punk bug. 

While All Time Low has almost consistently released an album every two years since its first in 2005, I still felt as though the band was before my time. This was especially clear to me by how few audience members below the age of 30 were in the crowd. I only started seeing people around my age (for reference, I’m 19) when the crowdsurfing craze began –– which, honestly, can we do more of this at rock shows, please? A teenage girl and her little brother (probably around the ages of 16 and eight) crowdsurfed together at least seven times. His friends will never believe what he’ll tell them the next day by the monkey bars. 

The band’s transitions between songs were oftentimes stalled by Gaskarth’s engagement with audience members, who twice threw separate wedding invitations onto the stage and a baby’s onesie and diaper to sign. There came a point, however, when these periods in between songs droned on for too long. Thankfully, the crowd’s energy returned as soon as the next song began. Gaskarth and lead guitarist Jack Barakat’s electric chemistry and stage presence had everyone up until the very last row of the balcony dancing. 

At last, the credits (literally) rolled, and the night came to an energetic close nearly five hours after the first opener went on. All Time Low’s North American leg of its world tour continues until the end of this month, with Australian and European dates continuing into next year. Fans of bands like The All-American Rejects, Panic! At The Disco, and Fall Out Boy, looking to be swept back in time to pop-punk’s prime, are sure to enjoy the show.