The hopes, and the stakes, have never been higher for All Time Low than right now. Riding the wave of two LPs and an EP for Hopeless Records that propelled them to “big fish” status in the Scene, the Maryland foursome have left their small pond for Interscope Records and a stab at big-time success in the mainstream. Dirty Work should have found All Time Low at the peak of their combined powers, but instead of closing rank the band seems to have let everyone and anyone into the record-making party. The results are a Frankenalbum, a collection of overpolished parts bolted together haphazardly, lacking both cohesion and any sort of steady vision.

Lead single “I Feel Like Dancin’” is a mess. All Time Low have staked their reputation on party songs — hell, they even titled their first album The Party Scene — but they’ve never written one this flat-out dumb before. I’ll give a pass to usually rock-solid vocalist/lyricist Alex Gaskarth and blame collaborator Rivers Cuomo; from the dopey melody to the cornball background clatter, it has all the hallmarks of Weezer’s dreadful post-Pinkerton lows. Yet it still manages to be better than “That Girl,” which mines the exact same she’s-awful-to-me-but-I-love-her-anyway territory of no less than three songs I’ve reviewed here in the past six months and somehow does it worse than any of them, even if you excuse the lyrics that cross the line from dopey bro-ism to full-on misogyny. 

To be sure, Dirty Work has its highlights. “No Idea” is as perfect a pop-rock song as you’ll find, with bubbly verses that positively swing before sliding into a neatly restrained chorus and less-is-more piano riff. But most of the album’s charms are stolen moments, like the wild chord changes that bubble up and quickly away in the middle of opener “Do You Want Me (Dead),” and the Motion City Soundtrack-worthy synths that squelch through “Forget About It,” a Nothing Personal-style pop rocker with a pleasingly leftfield prechorus. The adrenaline pulse of “Guts”’s verses hearkens back to their landmark So Wrong It’s Right EP; the speedy pop-punk 1-2 of “Heroes”’s verses could have been lifted from a mid-2000s Rufio track. And “Just The Way I’m Not” would have slayed in 1985, with Lep-worthy “Hey!”s to make you pump your rockfist and booming drums that would make Mutt Lange proud. (Also Lep-worthy — the song’s titular lyrical pun, one that’s half as clever as it thinks it is).

But All Time Low are at their best when churning out intensely relatable personal missives — , “Coffee Shop Soundtrack”’s broken passion, “Weightless”’s anthem for a generation-determined-to-get-it-right, even a track as simple as “The Beach” made endless summer feel like a birthright. Nothing here manages to tap into that well of emotion. “Paper Moon”’s escapist rush comes closest, but for every brilliant “cellophane soldiers, cheap origami” there’s a corresponding line of cliche-stacked-upon-cliche. (Ironically, the band did write at least one track during the Dirty Work sessions that’s as good as any of the aforementioned, a song titled “Actors” that Gaskarth leaked in demo form on his Tumblr last year. There isn’t a single track on Dirty Work that comes close to its perfect mix of desperate grit and soaring sweetness.)

On “A Daydream Away,” All Time Low revisit the dream-girl fantasy that propelled their breakthrough single “Dear Maria, Count Me In”. In that song, maybe the best of their short career, Gaskarth practically bursts with self-assured bravado and youthful swagger, a cocksure teen with magnetic charisma that pulls everything (and everyone) within earshot along for the ride. It might be just a fantasy, but there’s never a doubt that he will somehow make it real. On “Daydream,” the stakes are smaller, the dreams more realistic, and yet Gaskarth comes off as an emasculated, waffley ghost of his former self, his braggadocio swapped for simpering resignation. He sounds like a man who’s lost his mojo.

Dirty Work is a serviceable summer soundtrack, but it’s totally lacking in mojo.

**.5/*****

*This review was composed by Jesse Richman