With Rooney, the Academy Is, and This Is Me
Smiling
It's no shock that the All-American Rejects' Tyson Ritter (vocals, bass) and Nick Wheeler (guitar) first teamed up musically in their early high school years — the Rejects' inoffensive pop-punk is perfect for the tween who can't handle the brutal assault of a Blink 182 album. But if pandering to the mall-rat masses is your business model, you might as well do it right, and these guys have — their debut LP went platinum and made a name for then-unknown Doghouse Records in 2002, and their latest, Move Along, scored a major-label release on Interscope. Ripping a page from the yearbooks of the Ataris, the Starting Line and even late-model Bad Religion, the Rejects meld safety-scissors lyrics with the kind of catchy hooks you can't buy in a bait shop; the result is a sound that's as likable as it is overproduced. Think of AAR as the midnight snack of music — it'll rot your teeth, it won't tide you over, and you hope no one sees you eat it, but it sure does taste good going down. —
