Photo Credit: Stephen Ringer
In 2020, Aly & AJ’s 2007 single “Potential Breakup Song” went unexpectedly viral on TikTok. It’s a testament to the duo’s artistic integrity that on 2021’s A Touch of The Beat… – their first album in 14 years – and now, on With Love From, they don’t shamelessly try to recreate the same frantic, autotuned, electropop formula in a bid for continued viral success. On With Love From, the former teen stars fully shed the veneer of their 2000s output in favor of a fittingly mature sound that signals new growth and continued expertise in pop-songcraft.
The most obvious points of comparison for the music on With Love From are Fleetwood Mac and late-2000s/early-2010s Taylor Swift – a lightly twangy collection of songs with formidable melodies and enduring pleasantness. But the album’s best songs don’t mine emotional heaviness in the same way “Landslide” or “All Too Well” do. Instead, they are breezy, reliably lovely, easy-on-the-ears pop songs that demonstrate a strong knack for melody. Opener “Open to Something and That Something is You” – which sounds like something newly unearthed from a 1970s time capsule – is the perfect demonstration of this. A hazy, acoustic waltz, it briefly alludes to “losing faith,” but the song at its core is a testament to the seemingly limitless healing power of love.
“Tear The Night Up” is another slam-dunk from the duo – it bottles up desire like lightning in a bottle and releases it via one wild night out. In the titular promise to “tear the night up,” there’s a hint of something reckless and hedonistic, but such never rises above a mere suggestion. Warm harmonies, gentle acoustic strumming, and an agreeable electric guitar riff embed the song with a promise of salvation, comfort, and ultimately safety.
Where the album falters is where Aly & AJ expand their scopes to the existential. On the Joy Oladokun-featuring “Way of Nature Way of Grace,” the duo poses big questions about humanity – about the appropriate mindset to approach life’s struggles with, about the passage of time, and about that which we take for granted. The ambition is commendable, but the lack of lyrical follow-through isn’t, as the song descends into mindless repetitions of “love is on the move.” The inclusion of soulful crooner Joy Oladokun feels more like a transparent, even lazy, attempt to add more weight of feeling to the song, rather than being a necessary addition.
Thankfully, moments like this are pretty few and far between on With Love From – and the duo largely sticks to their core strengths. The title track is emblematic of the pair at their best – it’s filled with affecting intimacies, wide-eyed dreaming, and moments of nostalgia. Hints of regret in the verses are replaced by assured self-reflection and self-acceptance in the chorus (“I told you that I’d change // But I guess I never did”). It instantly ranks among the slickest and most evocative songs the duo has ever penned.
If most of With Love From sees Aly & AJ play it relatively safe, the closer “6 Months of Staring Into the Sun” is where the duo expands their ambitions and chart a promising path forward for the rest of their careers. Beginning as a sedate, woozy piano ballad, it eventually builds into an epic, psychedelic outro – if the rest of the album drew on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, here the central inspiration seems to be Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon. Turns out the duo has yet another surprise up their sleeves.
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