Fall Out Boy, Save Rock and Roll
Featured Album
It ain't no back-to-basics reunion
Eight years ago, most pop-punk bands would have swallowed their pride and bubblegum to trade places with Fall Out Boy. But ever since 2008′s Folie à Deux, an expansive, swaggering disc rightly acclaimed by critics but received by many fans with a distaste ordinarily reserved for post-Green Album Weezer, even FOB hasn’t shown much interest in being FOB: Singer/tune-writer Patrick Stump reinvented himself as an R&B crooner with 2011′s even sharper Soul Punk, which, of course, really brought out the haters; guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley went metal with the Damned Things, whose 2010 album Ironiclast completely bombed; lyricist/bassist Pete Wentz lost a guitarist and a singer before his electronic Black Cards could even release an album.
So Fall Out Boy are back with a chip on their shoulders and mixed messages in their music: They’re pissed at the folks who wouldn’t accept deviations from their original sound, yet suddenly they’re out to rescue it, as if they’re now the sole emo survivors. “How’d it get to be only me?/ Like I’m the last damn kid still kicking that still believes,” Stump sings in the final, title track featuring an Elton John as strikingly solemn as Courtney Love is very much herself in the preceding “Rat a Tat.”
As those cameos suggest, Save Rock and Roll ain’t no back-to-basics album. It starts out with an orchestral flourish on the galloping and flat-out fantastic “Phoenix,” and on the way to its piano-lead and even more symphonic finale, there’s white-knuckled relentlessness: Buzzsaw guitars blare while the zinger-packed songs — now credited to the entire band — pile on the hooks. A proven master at bridging the pop/rock gap, producer Butch Walker pumps even the most delicate filigree to stadium-sized proportions. Fall Out Boy has always been dramatic, but here they sometimes lapse into desperation, as if what they’re truly intent on saving is their fanbase.
-
lggloveron April 17, 2013 at 6:44 am said: I Don't Care...... So far my vote for album of the YEAR!!! Track 1 to 11 is a must listen. Every band should have a chip on their shoulder if it'll give way to these kind of results. I kept waiting for the songs to sound the same and just when I thought ....ah nope they brought their "A" game on this one and then some. I like It, I like a LOT!!! -
hollieon April 23, 2013 at 11:38 am said: I've been listening to Fall Out Boy for ten years now, since I was nineteen. They have grown up with me. Does this sound like Take This To Your Grave? No. Is it an awesome picture of where FOB are now? Yes, This is an album with no skippable tracks, from the opening cry of "Put on your warpaint!" to Courtney Love's angry rambling to just wanting to Save Rock & Roll this is a must for any fan of rock music.
-
musieon April 29, 2013 at 1:01 am said: only heard the single from the new album....and yeah it sucks...the album should be under a new band name rather than continue to kill the image of fall out boy people have.....also andy should have kept playing in burning empires...best band he was ever a part of
