There is no doubt that with the release and runaway success of 2007’s Infinity On High, Fall Out Boy broke onto an all-new level of stardom as songs including “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race,” “The Carpel Tunnel Of Love” and “Thnks fr the Mmrs” reached a sphere of acclaim and recognition that many fans began to equate with being the soundtrack to a lifestyle. Fifteen-year-old girls pined over singer Patrick Stump and bassist Pete Wentz and looked on them as emotionally articulate heartthrobs while young men the same age became well-versed in any minutiae pertaining to FOB available in a play to get close to those girls. Is this how a fashion change is affected? No doubt. Did the band get a clue quickly regarding what was going on around them? There is even less doubt and the proof of that manifests in the opening explosion of “Disloyal Order Of Water Buffaloes” – the lead-off track on Folie à Deux (French translation: “Madness To Two”). From the very beginning of the album, there is a far more self-assured swagger between the horn blasts and stomping guitars that drive the song and listeners can’t miss the commanding presence as well as the swing of it; it doesn’t need to be said outright in the lyric sheets because the way the band carries themselves here says it all; Fall Out Boy has taken over the world and they know it.
Does that mean the band is content to simply rest on laurels or tread water on Folie à Deux? Not exactly, the impression that one gets from this album is that Fall Out Boy knows they scaled the mountain with Infinity On High, and they want to take a moment to admire the view from the summit; no new ground broken, but none lost either.
For the most part, the songs stand on par with those from Infinity On High as far as songs including “I Don’t Care,” “America’s Suitehearts,” “(Coffee’s For Closers)” and “Tiffany Blews” all balance Fall Out Boy's expressed love of pop-punk changes with classic pop clichés (horns and strings to add some epic grandeur, “oo-oo-oo”s and “nah-nah-nah”s) that could have been easily mistaken for ironic snark before but are amped up so much that such effects seem more genuine and earnest here. It works, of course, because such trappings already flew high once and because the difference is so negligible, it’ll make those fans that the band won with Infinity On High cheer because they’ll recognize that their heroes have returned.
On a strictly critical note, closer examination reveals that the lyric sheets are only a hair less infectious, but that fact will probably go unnoticed for a while because the production supplied by FOB mainstay Neal Avron and Pharrell is more dense and imposing this time around, and thus compensates for the modest shortcoming.
Of course, now that they’ve got the weight to throw around, it’s expected that Fall Out Boy would get some expensive help to come along for the ride and that’s a chore that the band happily accepts. For “What A Catch Donnie,” Fall Out Boy shanghais a billion-dollar cast of extras that includes William Beckett (from The Academy Is…), Alex Deleon (The Cab), Travis McCoy (Gym Class Heroes), Gabriel Saporta (Cobra Starship), Brendan Urie (Panic At The Disco) and Elvis Costello (!!) to pitch in on back-up vocals while Pharrell does a really bizarre extended outro for “w.a.m.s.” Blondie matron Debbie Harry pitches in somewhere on “West Coast Smoker” too – but it’s difficult to tell where exactly as the gang choruses threaten to collapse in on themselves under their own overblown weight. It’s all very canny and expected though actually – the songs have just enough obvious and recognizable sounds in them to be unmistakably the work of Fall Out Boy and are well-done enough to keep rabid fans from feeling gypped – and at no point do they falter which, presumably, means they’re still at the top of their game; it’ll certainly be a crowd pleaser.
That said though, as “West Coast Smoker” fades out, one has to wonder what they’ll do next. Bringing the same game twice or simply maintaining can be rewarding (and difficult to pull off) – it is here – but there has to be a next step. Because there are no surprises and no expressions of further direction on Folie à Deux, what comes next will be a very interesting affair because whatever that record is, it will have to be characterized by both.
Folie à Deux comes out on December 16, 2008. The album is currently streaming on the band's myspace page.
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