When All Time Low and You Me At Six announced their massive co-headline tour it seemed to be the most talked about tour on social media. Touring the UKs finest arenas (with the support of Walk The Moon) I managed to see them at Glasgow and Manchester for two very unforgettable nights. One of the main issues with organising a co-headline tour is deciding who opens the night and who closes it- luckily for ATL and YMAS they settled this dispute with a friendly race between frontmen Alex Gaskarth (ATL) and Josh Franceschi (YMAS)– but after Josh came out on top it was up to ATL to open the show.
Before all of ATL’s live performances they play Paris by Kanye West, and when this came on over the speakers the crowd knew it was a mere 4 minutes before they hit the stage. Kicking off with A Love Like War the crowd really got going. It was a great song to open what was going to be a really, really great set. During their second song, Heroes, Alex actually stopped the song so he could help a fan injured in a mosh-pit get out of the crowd safely and tell the crowd to look after each other. I guess you could say he’s a bit of a Hero himself!
About halfway through the set, Rian (drums), Zack (bass) and Jack (lead guitar) left Alex on stage by himself so he could strip back the set to the very basics of just him and a guitar so he could perform Therapy. Although ATL are known for their dancey, pop-punk vibe you could tell Therapy was a very awaited song and everyone in the crowd had their phone torches out and were singing the lyrics back to Alex. It was a really incredible atmosphere within the room for this song and it was nice to just have a simple song added to the set.
The simpleness didn’t last for long though. Before they played Time-Bomb, Jack was firing t-shirts into the crowd and Alex was hand-picking certain people from the crowd to join the whole band on stage to perform with them. People were so desperate to be picked but unfortunately only around 10 are actually chosen, it’s a really clever way to maintain the crowds attention and keep them fully engaged throughout the night but also increases fan interaction with one of the most biggest, most popular bands of their genre.
Of course they included their newest single, Something’s Gotta Give, from their new album “Future Hearts”, backed up by fireworks and smoke machines the crowd had a really positive reaction to the song. It seemed a bit more special hearing Something’s Gotta Give because its live debut was on this co-headline tour. They finished the night off with Dear Maria, Count Me In. This definitely seemed like a crowd favourite and the whole room was moving. It ended their set on such a high that the anticipation for YMAS was huge.