Review Summary: The kids are alright. Not good, not bad, just...alright.
Oh Fall Out Boy, what a journey it has been. We've practically grown up together. From the Take This to Your Grave days of oh-so casually flipping my hair out of my eyes like every other "emo" (Oh good lord, just writing that word gave me a headache) teen of the times. To Folie a Duex becoming a part of the soundtrack to my final fleeting years before adulthood abruptly set it. This relationship between us has been marred with the turmoil of your hiatus, and then refreshed with the return of my teenage idols. The very band that influenced me to pick up a guitar and hit the stage was back in action leading me to expect another
Folie a Deux, pray for another
From Under the Cork Tree, and prepare myself for something along the lines of Panic! At the Disco's massive flop of Pretty Odd. With the release of Save Rock and Roll I quickly realized that none of my worries or wants were necessarily addressed, save for the flop expectation depending on the day I was listening. The product of the newly formed Fall out Boy was hard for me to wrap my head around. This band that I had spent a decade listening to was taking the exit to mainstream pop highway, and I quickly tried to jump out of the way of the speeding bus. That being said, the more Save Rock and Roll grew on my the less my expectations for what Fall out Boy was supposed to be weighed in on my opinion on what I was actually listening to. In my rush to judgement I completely overlooked the fact that the album as a standalone isn't really that bad. By no means did it stand up to any of their previous work, but in comparison to mainstream pop rock music, it was a good piece of work and a credit to their ability as musicians to deviate from the norm and make every album a different animal.
American Beauty/American Psycho came out of nowhere, even as an old fan who occasionally would check up on the band's plan for future releases, I'd have to say the announcement and promotion of the album were very short lived and unnoticeable (with the exception of Centuries being played a million times in the NCAA playoffs). They began streaming song after song on Youtube and before I knew it, the entire album was released and AB/AP was the 6th full length album released by the Chicago four piece.
If you haven't enjoyed the music of Fall out Boy up to this point, this album will do nothing to change your mind. Not only that, but if you have been a fan of Fall out Boy from the beginning and didn't care for Save Rock and Roll, don't expect to be blown away by this. Instead grab a nice cup of tea, sit in the shower, and listen to AB/AP crying while flashing back to the episode of South Park with the satirical sexual assault on the Indiana Jones franchise by it's creator. This is not From Under the Cork Tree, it isn't even Folie a Deux. Instead AB/AP comes across as a desperate grab for cash and mainstream success, as one of the most succesful of 00's pop punk bands takes themselves to their grave. Now as bitter as I am sure that sounded, it certainly isn't my final word on AB/AP. Expectations can very easily get in the way of enjoying an album, especially when you have a connection with the band spanning over half of your life, but for me, expectations are usually put to bed around the fourth or fifth listen to and album. So, and with as much reluctance as possible, I began to fall for this less punk, more pop Fall out Boy.
Fall out Boy has always had knack for making slight adjustments to their sound from album to album. With a jazz lick here, a piano lick there, but they spent most of their formative years toeing the water. Save Rock and Roll and American Beauty/American Psycho are much more along the lines of screaming cannonball and soaking everyone in the pool. The opening track
Irresistible will be the first to tell you that we're not going down the same road that we've been before. The song itself is by no means bad, the chorus being the strongest section with Patrick showing off his well tuned vocal talents, but it sufferers from the overall sickness that this album has come down with. It is just
so damn average. Average really covers most of the tracks on this album. The following song, and title track,
American Beauty/American Psycho continues along with the average theme and personally would be my pick for worst song on the album. And although it is one of the stronger songs on the album, especially by comparison, I'm not going to even begin to talk about
Centuries because even people who have actually been living under a rock have heard
Remember meeee for Centuriiiiies more times than a human being should ever subject themselves to.
After the sub-par opening to the album it finally begins to pick up a little steam on the fourth song in.
The Kids Aren't Alright is as close as you might get to the old Fall out Boy sound. Even though it is actually slower in tempo than most other songs on the album, it somehow comes across as much more energetic and genuine than a majority of the others. Perhaps even more importantly is that even with multiple listens the song never overstays it's welcome or becomes exhausting to listen to. The ups the downs, the hiatus, and some of the god-awful side projects aside, Wentz writes and Patrick belts
And in the end, I'd do it all again
They obviously don't feel the same way that some of their fans do about their foray into pop music, nor do they seem to have been bothered by the nay-sayers in the old days. Part of that attitude is what brought me around to rating this album a little higher than Save Rock and Roll. The unapologetic approach to writing the album that they want to write is an admirable quality, even if the end result suffers for it. Fall out Boy is not sorry for their choice of sound, and knowing their influences are rooted in R&B and Blues gives a little more credibility to the attempt to meld mainstream pop with bits and pieces of older styles of music.
The next track
Uma Thurman is an absolutely brilliant standout in an album of forgettable one-offs. Deciding on the rating this album was tough because this song alone was almost enough to warrant the 2.5 average rating instead of the 2. The Munsters sample is just too perfect, and the overall feel of the song is enough to make anyone want to jump out their seat and start dancing in the style of John Travolta. The horns are a beautiful touch and it's interesting to be able to clearly hear a drum solo from Andy Hurley during the end of the song. However what
Uma Thurman really has going for it is that it's just plain fun to listen to. Each play through is just as gratifying as the first.
This leads to a major problem with this albums track order. After
Uma Thurman's blaring horns and dance-able rhythm finally fade out, the jump to the rock ballad of
Jet Pack Blues really falls flat. Any momentum that the album had built comes to a grinding halt and I find myself waiting through the next few tracks to get to the more enjoyable tracks that close out the album.
Novicane,
Favorite Record, and especially
Immortals all suffer from the same disease of average-itis that plagues the beginning few tracks of the album.
The saving grace of the album really comes out of only 3 titles. The previously mentioned
Uma Thurman is the highest peak, but
Fourth of July and the album closer
Twin Skeletons are both very strong songs in their own right. Now don't take that statement to mean that these two tracks will knock your socks off, they won't, however they are solid and well put together.
Fourth of July opens with a very interesting instrumental solo coming from either a bassoon or bass clarinet, I'm really not certain, but it creates a very enjoyable atmosphere that leads perfectly into the massive chorus contained within. The instrumentals flow very well throughout the song and the chorus is extremely catchy and easy to listen to a multitude of times. The same can be said for
Twin Skeletons, but in a much different way. Skeletons is by far the darkest album on AB/AP and almost makes a return to their old sound being a little more reminiscent of something that could have fit on Folie a Duex or Infinity on High. Though
Twin Skeletons does have a lot going for it, somehow it doesn't ever seem to hit the way that it needs to. It's almost like a tease, you spend a lot of the song expecting it to really explode into a larger more full sound and it doesn't every quite happen.
In closing I'll just reiterate my main point. This album is the most average of the average that you'll listen to. A few poor songs like
Favorite Record, and
Immortals really detract from the highlights of the album and end up making the whole album just sort of sound like an unorganized mash-up of two different Fall out Boys. One that really understands how to use samples and effects to create high-flying choruses and memorable verses, and the other that writes terribly bland break-up songs. A large piece of the Fall out Boy puzzle is missing here too. There isn't one track on the albums that the lyrical quality can even stand up against the most generic work done on Corktree or Infinity. That's certainly a shame, as Wentz's tongue-in-cheek writing style became a selling point for the band in their earlier years. For all the effort put in to making these songs easily accessible to a wide audience most of the album just becomes redundant and exhausting after a few play-throughs. The lulls in the album really bring the entire work down as a whole creating a decent release for a band who's best years have been behind them for quite a while, but nothing that is going to make waves in the world of music critics. The whole album leaves the listener wishing for a little more
Thurman and a lot less
Centuries.
Suggested Tracks:
Uma Thurman
Fourth of July
Twin Skeletons
