Review Summary: More psychotic than beautiful
Within music, the word theatrical is rarely, if ever, being used as a genuine compliment. The word conjures images of overblown egos, ill-advised stage costumes and a misplaced sense of grandeur within a band’s music. Acts such as Meat Loaf and Kiss could not exist within the modern day rock world with any seriousness (not that Meat Loaf was ever that serious to begin with). Nowadays the “everyman” rock star is clamoured after; the one that looks like they’ve stumbled from the bar to the stage by happy accident. Thus far, Fall Out Boy have been successful by carefully straddling the line between band-next-door and something a bit flashier. They’ve always had an eye for dramatics, albeit not ostentatiously so, from the over the top lyrics to the downright bizarre music videos (Thnks Fr Th Mmrs, This Ain’t a Scene, The Take Over). The band has never shied away from putting on a show for fans and American Beauty/American Psycho, the bands sixth studio album, is their most flamboyant display yet.
The album opens with Irresistible, which proves to be a mission statement of sorts. It’s the Chicago pop-rockers swaggering to the boxing ring accompanied by blaring horns and a pounding bass drum before the chorus explodes into arena sized electro-rock (think Alex Clare’s Too Close lite). They’re acting up for the crowd from the first instant and showing that the slightly overly-sentimental songs from early albums are long gone; this is a new, chest beating FOB, bristling with confidence even when addressing a noxious relationship as they are on the opener. It’s confrontational, completely over the top, lewdly fun and a sign of things to come. The majority of songs on the album follow the same melodramatic electro-rock blueprint and find Fall Out Boy reaching The Killers levels of showmanship.
Luckily, melodrama fits Wentz and co. more comfortably than the cynicism from Infinity on High or the try-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink of Save Rock and Roll. The trio of highlights (Centuries, Jet Pack Blues and Fourth of July) have an escalating sense of extravagant distress. Lead single Centuries finds the band arrogantly committing themselves to history whilst taking the regal piano from Save Rock and Roll’s title track and surrounding it with aggressive foot stomps and one of the heaviest guitar riffs they’ve ever had. The song also reveals the album’s greatest asset: Patrick Stump’s vocals. His voice has long been the band’s not-so-secret weapon but on AB/AP his singing is uniformly jaw-dropping and is particularly show-stopping on Centuries. Jet Pack Blues, meanwhile, somehow manages to sound even more exaggerated with Stump lamenting a lost love howling “did you ever love her? Do you know?” but it’s the piano creating the sound of a solitary bell tolling that provides the song its ominous gravitas. Album centrepiece and undoubtable highpoint Fourth of July, another ode to a failed relationship that ended too soon, intensifies the drama to near breaking point with Stump lost somewhere in the blurred area between impassioned and unhinged. The music sounds only slightly more stable with cinematic strings, frantic hand claps and incendiary drumming that threatens to collapse under its own weight at any moment. The song really should be the last track; it feels like a culmination of all the theatricality preceding it and leaves the band and listeners burnt out with its visceral anguish and should immediately be included in the Fall Out Boy’s greatest song conversation.
Sadly, away from those songs the album stumbles. Stump spoke of wanting to create a stylistically consistent album and whilst AB/AP does have a cohesiveness, that actually damages the record. Second half tracks Novocaine and Immortals are equally brash and just as maximal as the others but fail to hit the same heights, leaving the listener slightly numb from the homogeny of stadium sized choruses. They’re not bad songs per se; they just feel like lesser versions of the highpoints. The only truly bad song is the title track but it makes up for that fact with the sheer depth of its awfulness. The song sounds like a Charli XCX throwaway right down to lines like “I think I fell in love again, maybe I just took too much cough medicine.” It’s got the same brat-pop feel as Charli’s latest album Sucker without any of the tongue in cheek fun. The few songs that attempt to vary from stadium anthems, such as The Kids Aren’t Alright and Favourite Record, focus more on elements of pop (the whistling on The Kids should send Edward Sharpe to his lawyer immediately and it’s a mystery why Daft Punk-ish robot voices appear on Favourite Record) but ultimately feel a little flat and bland. Then there’s Uma Thurman, which is dizzying in its constant musical switches but ultimately leaves listeners feeling something akin to motion sickness opposed to the breathless exhilaration they were aiming for.
American Beauty/American Psycho is one extended overblown performance from Fall Out Boy that finally see them fully embracing their love for flair. Sadly, only the middle section of this particular show manages to captivate the audience and, despite the one man supernova that is Patrick Stump, leaves listeners longing for stronger accompanying acts.
