Pop-punk legends Alan Day & Dan O’Connor from Four Year Strong join us backstage in Southampton to chat touring, heavier sounds, and breaking creative barriers with their latest album analysis paralysis.

words and photos by Alia Thomas | Feb 27, 2025

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Joining us backstage on their tour bus at Southampton’s Engine Rooms, we sat down with none other than pop-punk icons Four Year Strong during their ‘Analysis Paralysis’ tour. Photographer and journalist Alia Thomas dives into their tour life, the making of their latest album, Analysis Paralysis, and what’s next for the band.

From leaning further into the core side of easy core to their thoughts on the future of pop-punk, no stone was left unturned as we chatted with Alan Day and Dan O’Connor (lead vocals and guitar) to get the lowdown on one of their heaviest tour cycles to date.

You’re currently on tour in the UK for Analysis Paralysis. How does it feel to be back, and how has the crowd response been so far?

Alan: “It’s great.”

Dan: “It feels awesome being back. I mean, we haven’t headlined here since 2017. We did come back for Slam Dunk last year. We did our Slam Dunk, like, kind of debut back from Covid over here. But yeah, it feels amazing to be back over here. And the shows have been incredible. Some of the best headlining shows we’ve ever done over here.”

Alan: “And the new music has been going over really well, which is exciting. Yeah. Yeah. All good.”

Dan: “All good things.”

So, with the new album’s heavier tracks, how have you integrated them into the setlist, and how are fans reacting to them live?

Dan: “I mean, we just kind of threw them in wherever they would go.”

Alan: “We’ve been opening with two of the new tracks, which has been interesting. We’ve never really been able to do that, like, put a new song first. But it’s going great, and it is one of the heavier songs as well.”

Dan: “I think with this record being heavier, it makes it a little bit easier to integrate it into the set, even though we’re also playing one of the more chill-out songs on the record. Maybe it’s me during the set as well, but it’s been kind of surprising that a lot of the newer songs are actually getting some of the bigger responses, even when compared to some of the older stuff when we play. Which is awesome for us because we like playing the new stuff. Obviously, it’s new. It’s fresh. It’s exciting.”

Are there any UK venues or cities you’re particularly excited to play on this tour, and why?

Dan: “We’re really excited about tomorrow.”

Alan: “Yeah, London is always awesome. All UK shows are great, though.”

Dan: “We played Koko on the last headliner that we did. That was a very fun show, so I’m looking forward to that one. Plus, that area is really cool. There’s lots of cool stuff to walk around and do.”

You’ve got Koyo and Shoreline supporting you on this run. How did those collaborations come about, and how has it been sharing the stage with them?

Alan: “It’s been awesome.”

Dan: “Well, yeah, we asked Koyo if they were available to come over and do it. They weren’t available for the first half of the European tour, but they came over for the UK side of the tour. And then Shoreline, well, they’re on Pure Noise Records. So we usually like to pair with a band that’s from Europe or the UK in some way. Just because, I don’t know, it just makes it easier. Especially like, we could be like, ‘Hey, can we borrow a bass cab or something like that?’ And their name got brought up, and we checked them out, and I thought they were awesome.”

Analysis Paralysis leans into a heavier, more hardcore-inspired sound. What inspired this shift, and is this a direction you plan to continue exploring?

Dan: “It wasn’t really planned.”

Alan: “I think we just started writing, and it just was heavier. That was the stuff that was exciting us while we were writing. Yeah, we kind of just go with whatever is exciting when we’re writing.”

Dan: “Yeah, we tend to talk a lot about what we want to do, and then we don’t really put any of it into practice. We just get into a room, and whatever comes out comes out. So we’ll see. I would like to keep being heavier and writing heavy riffs. They’re really fun to play. I mean, we grew up going to hardcore shows and metal shows back in Massachusetts, and it definitely feels, you know, there’s definitely a little bit of an at-home-ness to playing heavy music.”

Alan: “Especially live. Every set always seems to go over really well.”

Dan: “Yeah, and we’ve always played even our not-heavy songs more aggressively live than they are on the record anyway. So playing aggressively doesn’t really not come naturally, but I was going to say it sounds like a natural progression.”

The title Analysis Paralysis feels very relatable. How does this theme reflect where you are as a band right now, and how does it tie into the new album’s sound?

Alan: “I think the reason the album’s called that is because we were overanalyzing and therefore getting nothing done when we were trying to come up with artwork and come up with the album title.”

Dan: “Even writing songs, like, I was saying we would just sit and talk for hours of like, ‘I want it to be like this,’ and like, ‘I want it to feel this way.’”

Alan: “And then we’d go pick up a guitar and be like, ‘I don’t know what to do with this thing.’ So, we just wildly overcomplicated what we thought it needed to be. But then at the end of the day, when we kind of let go, it just made things happen. They just happened as they were meant to be, you know?”

Dan: “We wrote the record relatively quickly. And I think that gave us not a lot of room to second-guess. It’s a lot of gut decisions and not a lot of going back to rehash the idea. But also, a lot of times when you go back and you overanalyze something, you end up ruining what was cool about it in the first place.”

Alan: “I think the first version is always better than the tenth version.”

Dan: “Exactly. So this record is a lot of first versions of things.”

You said you wrote the album in a short space of time with no finished songs beforehand. What was the most unexpected or spontaneous moment from that process?

Alan: “Probably the song ‘Dead End Friend.’ Well, I guess not necessarily because what happened with that song is we tried writing the chorus. We had the instrumentals kind of sorted out. It was just, I couldn’t get it. And we made the decision to cut it from the album because we were just like, ‘Not into it.’ And then, literally the last day in the studio, we had a couple of hours to kill all morning, and me and Dan were just like, ‘Should we try to give this one more go? Like, try and write something here?’ And we wrote the version that’s out, and we showed it to the producer, Will Putney, and he was just like, ‘Yes, let’s record it right now.’

He was all super excited about it, and it ended up being the first song we released. So that was just really unexpected, especially for us because we were too close to it. We knew that it was like this last-ditch effort on the last day. So, we weren’t necessarily super confident. My voice was fucked that day, like trying to sing after like a week of screaming.”

Dan: “Because usually, we save a lot of the screaming for the last. Yeah, we do stuff, and screaming, we’re like, ‘We’ll leave that to the end.’ But we did all the screaming, and then we assumed we weren’t doing the song. We decided we weren’t going to do it, and then my voice was toast. It ended up sounding fine, but like, I can hear it, and it pains me to remember what that felt like.”

So, do you have that track on the setlist?

Alan: “Yes. It’s awesome. It’s very fun. Yeah.”

Which song from Analysis Paralysis has popped off the most on this tour?

Alan: “‘Uncooked.’ Yeah, that’s my favorite to play. Partially because it is so kind of crazy every night. It really seems to get the crowd moving.”

Dan: “Yeah. It’s one of the songs that, like, I don’t even say what it’s called, and we just start playing it, and you hear the crowd get excited. And that’s just, I know it’s a cool feeling. It’s really fun. Yeah.”

Alan: “That, and we’ve been opening with ‘aftermath/afterthought,’ which is the first song on the album, and that was fun too.”

What’s been your favourite song from the album to play on this tour cycle?

Dan: “It’s tough because I like so many of them for different reasons. I would say ‘Uncooked’ is probably my favourite song on the record. Although ‘Maybe It’s Me’ is a really cool song as well because it’s so different from what we’ve done. And the last track, ‘How Do I Let You Go?,’ is, I think, a cool song. Yeah, I look forward to the day that we get to play that one.”

Rounding things off, we have our series of quick-fire questions. 

What’s the most crazy thing that’s happened at a live show?

Dan: “Some guy asked me the other day if I wanted to have a threesome with him and his wife, with a sign from the crowd. I turned him down.”

Alan: “One time on Warped Tour, we had what we were told at the time was the record for Warped Tour for the number of people in the medic tent after our set. After our Boston date of Warped Tour.”

Dan: “Which is like our hometown show.”

Alan: “I don’t know if I should be proud, but I am.”

Dan: “I remember the first time we played the UK, and somebody threw a piece of parquet floor from all the way at the back at Electric Ballroom. Yeah, somebody pulled up a piece of the floor and threw it from the very back of the room, and you just see it flying, and it just hit Alan right between the eyes.”

Alan: “And I just started bleeding.”

Dan: “And I mean, it was a lucky miss, though.”

Who are you listening to right now?

Alan: “I mean, my favourite thing right now is Mk.gee. It’s fucking amazing.”

Dan: “I don’t really have anything right now. I really don’t. I’m not really in a music-listening phase right now.”

Alan: “The stuff I’ll rattle off is the stuff that I’m really into in 2024 that is still carrying over. I’m in a little bit of a lull right now of new music, like finding new music. But I was really into IDLES’ new record, the new Fontaines D.C. record was really, really great, and Magdalena Bay.”

What does the future of pop-punk look like to you?

Alan: “I don’t even know what the present is like. And I think that’s the place that the Four Year Strong that exists now is, is like a product of that. Of not really knowing what being a part of pop-punk right now sounds like. Pop-punk has kind of just become this umbrella term.”

Dan: “Yeah. It’s an amalgamation of so many different things.”

Alan: “Yeah, it’s many different versions of what pop-punk could be.”

Dan: “Hardcore is the exact same thing.”

Alan: “Yeah. So, man, I don’t know. I hope it’s good because that would be good for us.”

Dan: “I hope that it keeps… there’s a really cool thing right now that, and I don’t know if it’s a product of because there’s so much music out there, but there is a lot of rewarding creativity right now where, like, songs that sound different than things that you’ve heard before.

And like, not necessarily just listening to something that sounds like a thousand other different things and thinking that it is something new when it’s obviously not. I think that right now is a really cool… it’s really a really cool acceptance of bands trying weird things, like, you know, maybe that might be left field for them.”

Alan: “I mean, we did the same with the new album. It took some weird swings because we just haven’t.”

Dan: “That’s, I mean, to be honest, as a creative, as an artist, that’s what we want to do. We want to try weird stuff. We want to be as great as possible, challenge ourselves. The last thing in the world that we want to do is go into a studio and feel like we have to write a record that sounds like something we’ve already done in order to maintain, you know, our band in some way because, I mean, I don’t know, we just don’t flourish in that environment at all.”

What can fans expect from the rest of the UK tour?

Alan: “Well, there’s only two days left, so not a whole lot.”

Dan: “But two great shows. Two really great shows. Well, three. England. Oh yeah. Yeah, that’s true. I’m really excited. I think tomorrow in London is going to be a really fun show for everyone who’s there. Yeah. And Brighton will be cool too. I mean, it’s been a while since we’ve been to Brighton. Yeah, yeah, because we didn’t play there on the Rise headliner. So the last time we were there…”

Alan: “I don’t think so. I don’t remember if we did. The last time I remember being there was on the Kerrang Tour, and wow, I know we played there on the East Coast Antidote tour, you know, with Ghost of a Thousand. 2009. So we haven’t been there in a while.

analysis paralysis is out now via Pure Noise Records