The All-American Rejects Didn't Return to London – They Came Back to Finish Something At Kentish Town Forum
- Alan Bryce
- 12 minutes ago
- 4 min read
O2 forum Kentish Town- 16th June
IMAGES / WORDS ALAN BRYCE
I walked into the O2 Kentish Town Forum expecting nostalgia; the safe, museum glass kind, and instead walked straight into something volatile, unresolved, and borderline feral. Fourteen years since The All-American Rejects last toured the UK (back when Kids in the Street tour dragged them through in 2012) and whatever time was supposed to heal had instead pressurized everything. The room felt like it had been holding its breath ever since that last run, like this night was picking up a conversation that had been rudely cut off mid-sentence.
The crowd wasn’t easing into the night. They were coiled. You could see it in the way people scanned the stage before anything even started, like they were bracing themselves for impact, not a show, but a collision with a past self that hadn’t quite gone away.
Then Tyson Ritter walked out and made sure there’d be no such thing as distance.
He doesn’t command the stage, he unsettles it. Tall, elastic, permanently on the verge of either seducing or derailing the entire room, Ritter plays the frontman like it’s a role he both loves and distrusts. One second he’s all swagger and exaggerated rock star poise, the next he’s cutting through it with a smirk or a strange, lurching movement that reminds you this is all performance. And somehow that makes it feel more real now than it ever did back then.
They opened with “Swing, Swing,” and any illusion of this being a gentle reacquaintance evaporated instantly. The place jumped. Not warmed up but ignited. Bodies were already moving like those fourteen years between tours had been compressed into that first riff. “Fallin’ Apart” and “My Paper Heart” followed, and suddenly the night took on this strange dual quality: tightly wound songs, still razor sharp, colliding with a crowd reacting like they’d carried them intact all this time.
By “One More Sad Song” and “Get This,” the room had fully tipped into participation. People weren’t just singing, they were leaning into the songs, shouting lines with the kind of conviction you only earn by living with them for well over a decade. “I Wanna,” “Sweat,” “Search Party!,” “Stab My Back”, none of it felt like deep cuts dusted off for completists. The crowd treated everything like it mattered, like this wasn’t a greatest hits exercise but a reopening of something unfinished.
When “Dirty Little Secret” finally hit, it detonated. The entire place turned into a confession booth with no exit. Ritter leaned forward, prowling, feeding on the volume as the audience howled it back at him - louder, harsher, more desperate than the record ever allowed.
Then, mid-set, they pulled the floor out.
“Green Isn’t Yellow” and “There’s A Place” arrived stripped down, acoustic, and suddenly all that chaos folded inward. The Forum did something rare. It didn’t chatter, didn’t disengage. It focused. Voices softened but didn’t disappear, singing along in ways that felt intimate, almost invasive. People leaned into each other, heads close, the noise replaced by this strange collective stillness. It wasn’t a breather; it was a deepening. Without the volume, the songs felt closer, heavier. Like they’d aged along with everyone in the room.
Ritter shifted too. Not abandoning his theatricality, but letting it loosen, letting small flickers of something real show through. Pauses, glances, a sense that even he felt the weight of revisiting this material after so long away from UK stages. And the crowd met him there, completely present. No drift. No phones held high like shields. Just attention.
It couldn’t last, of course.
“Kids In The Street” pulled things back toward motion, a subtle nod to that last UK tour in 2012, the last time this whole exchange had played out on British soil, before “It Ends Tonight” swelled into something grander. And then “Move Along” arrived, and everything tipped again.
If the earlier reactions had been explosive, this was something else, something heavier. People shouted the chorus like it was still doing work in their lives, like fourteen years hadn’t dulled the message but embedded it deeper. It wasn’t triumphant. It was earned. Ritter didn’t try to steer it. He let it happen, watching, riding it, that half-smile cutting across his face like he knew this moment had outgrown the band entirely.
They left the stage with the room roaring, not politely waiting for an encore, but demanding it.
When they came back, the energy had shifted. Looser. Stranger. Ritter opened with “Easy Come, Easy Go,” his solo track, and it felt like a curve thrown deliberately off-speed. Intimate, off-kilter, a reminder that he’s always been slightly out of phase with expectations. The audience stayed with him, curious, receptive.
But everyone knew what was coming.
And when “Gives You Hell” hit, the place erupted.
Not nostalgic. Not ironic. Feral. The entire room screamed every line like it had weight behind it, like each person had spent fourteen years collecting reasons to mean it. Smiles that weren’t entirely friendly. Voices full of bite. It wasn’t a singalong; it was a release. The kind that only builds when something has been left unresolved for far too long.
Ritter played it perfectly; exaggerated, theatrical, just self-aware enough, but crucially, he ceded control. The crowd owned it. He fed off them, bounced against them, let them shape the moment into something bigger and messier than the band alone could ever deliver.
That’s what the night became.
Not a comeback. Not even really a concert.
A reckoning delayed since that last Kids in the Street run in 2012. Fourteen years of distance collapsing into one loud, messy, cathartic release. The songs hadn’t aged out. The crowd hadn’t moved on. And Tyson Ritter, gloriously unstable at the centre of it all, made sure none of it felt too neat or too comfortable.
Walking out into the London night, ears ringing and chest still buzzing, it didn’t feel like we’d watched something return.
It felt like something unfinished had finally picked back up where it left off and discovered it still had teeth.
SET LIST
Swing, Swing
Fallin’ Apart
My Paper Heart
One More Sad Song
Get This
I Wanna
Sweat
Search Party!
Stab My Back
Dirty Little Secret
Green Isn’t Yellow (Acoustic)
There’s A Place (Acoustic)
Kids In The Street
It Ends Tonight
Move Along
ENCORE
Easy Come, Easy Go (Tyson Ritter song)
Gives You Hell
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