[Particle Person]

I kind of like "The Carpal Tunnel of Love", though. What is it with emo edge bands and their annoyingly long band names and song names?

[juner]

From the CFP:

[Snupes]

^ Should be getting there soon, but not listening to the song until I get to that album (which is out in a few days, so hopefully this upcoming week). :]


Leaked in London
Live EP


Recorded: 29 January 2007
Released: 6 February 2007

Band lineup

Patrick Stump (lead vocals, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, piano)
Pete Wentz (bass guitar, backing vocals)
Joe Trohman (lead guitar, rhythm guitar)
Andy Hurley (drums)

All tracks authored by Patrick Stump and Pete Wentz, except where noted, and all music composed by Fall Out Boy.

1. This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race (3:25)
2. Thriller (3:29)
3. Dance, Dance (3:15) (Wentz)
4. Golden (2:37) (Stump, Wentz, Wesley Eisold)
5. Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name of This Song So We Wouldn't Get Sued (3:09) (Wentz)

Review
Alternatively known as a compilation of all of Fall Out Boy's non-ridiculously-long song titles, plus one that is. My biggest problem with live albums is that the songs are generally just less-polished live versions of polished album songs, with little to no variation. In Fall Out Boy’s case, this is actually a blessing at times. Mainly because Stump’s voice has improved majorly, when it was one of the things holding them back in their first few releases. Songs like “Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued” are much, much better with his wider range, and went from a song I like to a song I really like. Not a huge improvement, sure, but it’s better. Unfortunately this EP is only five songs long, and only two of those are older songs. Therefore we get worse versions of three tracks from the album I just listened to, plus two improved older tracks. So yeah. Not worth a listen unless you’re particularly fond of the aforementioned track or “Dance, Dance” and want a better (IMO) version.

[Roundy]

Somehow this thread feels even less necessary than Parsifal's Zappa threads.  I hadn't thought that possible.

[Saddam Hussein]

My Led Zeppelin thread, however, is very necessary.

[Snupes]

Somehow this thread feels even less necessary than Parsifal's Zappa threads.  I hadn't thought that possible.

Well obviously this isn't necessary. I'm not trying to cater to your tastes, just doing what I like. :]


****: Live in Phoenix
Concert film

Recorded: 22 June 2007
Released: 1 April 2008

Band lineup

Patrick Stump (lead vocals, guitar, piano)
Pete Wentz (bass guitar, backing vocals)
Joe Trohman (guitar, rhythm guitar)
Andy Hurley (drums)

Songs included (in order of appearance [fuck finding all the writers though])

Thriller
Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy
Don't Matter (Akon cover)
Sugar, We're Going Down
Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn't Get Sued
Of All the Gin Joints in All the World
I Slept with Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me
I'm Like a Lawyer with the Way I'm Always Trying to Get You Off (Me & You)
A Little Less Sixteen Candles, a Little More "Touch Me"
Beat It" (Michael Jackson cover)
The Carpal Tunnel of Love      
Golden
I Write Sins Not Tragedies (Panic! at the Disco cover)
 * Includes a fragment of The Seed (2.0) by The Roots
  * Also it's really just a cover of the chorus of the song
   * Really fuck this, I was so excited
This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race
Thnks fr th Mmrs
"The Take Over, The Breaks Over"
One and Only
Dance, Dance
Saturday

Review

Like I said in the post before this one, I generally don’t like concert albums, and I also generally don’t like concert recordings either because they’re just concert albums where you get to watch people stand around singing and playing instruments. That said, I was surprised that I actually enjoyed this. Many of the songs are now-much-better versions of older tracks, and even some of the new ones “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race” are performed with newfound energy and some changed or modified aspects. They also do a cover of “Beat It” that I really enjoyed, and I don’t know what drum solos are normally like but Andy did a magnificent one.

So yeah. I don’t have much to say because I’m really tired, though the next review is going to make up for that, except that I like the way Patrick wears his hat so you can’t see his eyes.

[Snupes]

Folie à Deux
Studio Album


Recorded: July 2008 - September 2008
Released: 16 December 2008

Band lineup

Patrick Stump (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, piano)
Pete Wentz (bass guitar, backing vocals)
Joe Trohman (lead guitar)
Andy Hurley (drums)

All tracks authored by Pete Wentz and all music composed by Fall Out Boy.

1. Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes (4:17)
2. I Don't Care (3:34)
3. She's My Winona (3:51)
4. America's Suitehearts (3:34)
5. Headfirst Slide into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet (3:54)
6. The (Shipped) Gold Standard (3:19)
7. (Coffee's for Closers) (4:35)
8. What a Catch, Donnie (4:51)
9. 27 (3:12)
10. Tiffany Blews (3:44)
11. w.a.m.s. (4:38)
12. 20 Dollar Nose Bleed (4:17)
13. West Coast Smoker (2:46)

Review

a.k.a. the album where Fall Out Boy finally toned down their song titles.

Wow. I’d heard that this album was much less standard than all of their other stuff, but Goddamn. With each album they just get better and better and more and more varied. I can say, hands-down, this is my favourite Fall Out Boy album. All that’s left is Save Rock and Roll, which I’m excited for, but it’s going to have a hard time beating this. It’s hard to do reviews here because they don’t change in huge ways, just get incrementally better in ways that my review of this album would be almost the same as my review of Infinity on High, in that I’d compare this to that as I compared that to From Under the Cork Tree.

On a song-by-song basis, my favourite is absolutely easily “Headfirst Slide into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet”. It’s wonderful. Second to that are “I Don’t Care” and “20 Dollar Nose Bleed”. “HSiCoaBB” (a.k.a. Hissy Co-Ab) is basically about a guy cheating on his girlfriend with some guy’s wife (whom he loves more than the husband loves her) while trying to convince himself his girlfriend isn’t cheating on him, too. It’s convoluted, but his heartfelt confessions of obsession are great in a fucked-up way.

“What a Catch, Donnie” is pretty great as well, but mainly for the second half. I kind of wish they’d saved this idea for the end of the album, since it was ostensibly the ‘end’ for Fall Out Boy at the time. Before that, though, I like the start of the song because of how much I identify with it. Where he snips “I got troubled thoughts and the self-esteem to match/What a catch, what a catch”, and then begins singing of the way he sabotages his own romances with warnings to his lovers about what a mess he is, how they deserve better, or how he won’t go for it for fear of what will happen. I wish they’d made a full song to expound on it more, because that’s basically the story of my love life. ;-; Anyway, the second half. They bring in a bunch of great musicians (Elvis Costello, Brendon Urie, Alexander DeLeon, Doug Neumann, Travie McCoy, William Beckett and Gabe Saporta) for the end, where the song sort of starts drifting off into a mess of a chorus while all those musicians chime in variously and simultaneously with the choruses of a bunch of older Fall Out Boy songs, and it’s a weirdly nostalgic look back at a career I’ve only been really following for, what, a bit over two weeks now? That’s a weird feeling.

“Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes” and “w.a.m.s.” get shout-outs for showing even more vocal improvement from Patrick, but otherwise there isn’t much else to point out specifically. I mean, they’re all great, but nothing I feel inspired to write about. Anyway…

“20 Dollar Nose Bleed”, the lead-up to the finale, is a disjointed musing on various issues interspersed with cries of wanting to drown it all out with drugs. The first nods to the disappearance of Richey Edwards (Have you ever wanted to disappear? […] Go out and preach on Manic Street?), the second to George W. Bush (Goes to the desert with the same war his dad rehearsed/Came back with flags on coffins and said “we won, oh we won”), and the third (after a snazzy scat about Benzedrine) to society as a whole before devolving into talk about drugs and an eventual rant on basically everything and nothing. It leads, with vitriol, into the angry final track, “West Coast Smoker”, which sort of caps off the album with aggressiveness directed towards everyone and everything and what a nervous wreck the narrator is. I still think “What a Catch, Donnie” would have been a better finish, but what do I know

[Snupes]

Save Rock and Roll
Studio Album


Recorded: October 2012 - March 2013
Released: 12 April 2013

Band lineup

Patrick Stump (lead vocals, guitars, keyboard, additional programming and production)
Pete Wentz (bass guitar, backing vocals, additional production)
Joe Trohman (guitars, backing vocals, keyboard, additional programming and production)
Andy Hurley (drums, percussion, backing vocals, additional pro)

All tracks authored (except where noted) and composed by Fall Out Boy.

1. The Phoenix (4:04)
2. My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up) (Stump, Wentz, Trohman, Hurley, Butch Walker, John Hill) (3:09)
3. Alone Together (3:23)
4. Where Did the Party Go (4:03)
5. Just One Yesterday (featuring Foxes) (4:04)
6. The Mighty Fall (featuring Big Sean) (Stump, Wentz, Trohman, Hurley, Walker, Hill, Sean Anderson) (3:32)
7. Miss Missing You (3:30)
8. Death Valley (3:46)
9. Young Volcanoes (3:24)
10. Rat a Tat (featuring Courtney Love) (Stump, Wentz, Trohman, Hurley, Courtney Love) (4:02)
11. Save Rock and Roll (featuring Elton John) (4:41)

Review

The big comeback album. Only one problem: it is very much treated as a comeback album. The opener, “The Phoenix”, talks a lot about rising from the ashes and returning, which is fine for the opener (not to mention the kickass vocals and intensity), but it begins to become too much of a theme on the album.

“My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)” reflects back on how their songs affected people, in sort of a neat way at least, saved mainly by the wonderful instrumentation (the “bam, bam” of the guitar punctuating second-to-last word of the first two lines of each verse is wonderful).

One notable thing about this album is that the lyrics are no longer solely authored by Wentz (with occasional help from Patrick). They’re now authored by all of Fall Out Boy. On one hand, this is good. Wentz had a flair for way too many puns, often going overboard with his sarcasm and desire for the spotlight, sort of hijacking the band to make music about himself. On the other…”Alone Together”. The most generic track I’ve heard from them. It hurts. The music on this album has lost a lot of their sarcastic, self-aware lining and become anthems or generic pop rock songs. This is true for “Where Did the Party Go” and “Just One Yesterday” as well, though at least the latter was a bit better.

“The Mighty Fall” is almost amazing. Almost. But then they decided Big Sean needed to be on it. Ew. I’m open to rap verses in rock songs, but...if you’ve heard a Big Sean song, you’ve already heard this verse. Cue slang and stuff about sex. As well as ad-libs and reminding you who’s singing on the track at the beginning.

“Miss Missing You” is the first sign of their returning snark, which more fully finds its place on the album’s most surprising track, “Young Volcanoes”. A folksy Fall Out Boy song. While I had never imagined that possible before, I must say I really like the results. Patrick’s new new newfound (really fucking incredible) vocals shine here, where he doesn’t have to literally scream to be heard over the clashing guitars and distortion.

Speaking of, “Death Valley” is probably my favourite vocal performance from him (alongside “Golden” and the aforementioned “Young Volcanoes). His five-year post-hiatus experimentation in R&B really show on this album, and his vocal abilities (no longer just range, but actual vocal trills, climbs and wavers) are used almost to the fullest.

Conversely, however, Stump’s vocal prowess is also a stab against the album. It seems like a large portion of the songs try to show off his singing, even if it doesn’t fit with the track. This doesn’t go for all of them, but the album really, really feels like they’re trying to get their feet back on the ground. Which I understand, it’s just a shame they didn’t work together a little more in “practice” before putting this together. The tracks that were recorded later largely seem to be better.

Anyway, “Rat a Tat” is the most similar to their old work, in its sound and its rage. The track is driven largely in part by interspersed rants by Courtney Love (and some angry singing to close it off) and it’s a huge feeling. This would have been a great closer, but unfortunately they decided they had to finish with the very okay “Save Rock and Roll”. Featuring Elton John. It’s not a bad song, but it’s just…sappy, overwrought slow rock. Especially with Elton’s presence. It tries so hard to be grandiose and anthemic but comes off as stereotypical and unnecessary because of that. It’s an unfortunate finish to an album that has hints of greatness but overall slides a bit too much into the “pop” category. Even if Fall Out Boy never used to push boundaries, at least they felt unique. By the last couple of albums, you knew a Fall Out Boy song when you heard one. If it weren’t for Stump’s voice here, plenty of these songs could have gone to any other pop rock artist.

So yeah. A pretty damn good album, just disappointing. Not as good as the great Folie à Deux, better than most of their work, but not the evolution I was hoping it would be. Great at times, pretty damn generic the rest of the time.

[Roundy]

Somehow this thread feels even less necessary than Parsifal's Zappa threads.  I hadn't thought that possible.

Well obviously this isn't necessary. I'm not trying to cater to your tastes, just doing what I like. :]

I know, I'm just joshing ya.  I actually came to like Parsifal's stupid Zappa threads.

[Snupes]

(Note: These next two reviews were actually done several days ago, I just never put them up)

PAX AM Days
EP


Recorded: July 2013
Released: 15 October 2013

Band lineup

Patrick Stump (lead vocals, guitars)
Pete Wentz (bass guitar, backing vocals)
Joe Trohman (guitars, backing vocals)
Andy Hurley (drums, percussion, backing vocals)

All tracks authored and composed by Fall Out Boy.

1. We Were Doomed from the Start (The King Is Dead) (1:35)
2. Art of Keeping Up Disappearances (1:03)
3. Hot to the Touch, Cold on the Inside (1:24)
4. Love, Sex, Death (1:23)
5. Eternal Summer (1:45)
6. Demigods (1:50)
7. American Made (1:38)
8. Caffeine Cold (2:41)

Review

Second-to-last in my reviews. I’ve been excited for this EP, because it’s essentially eight punk tracks recorded in the space of a few hours over two days. The producer Ryan Adams reached out to them when they were in the area at PAX AM and, basically, they got drunk and jammed for a while. Not the pop punk of their heyday, but actual, hardcore, adrenaline-fueled semi-improvised punk. I say semi-improvised because although they planned to actually come up with the songs in fuller forms, a lot of the time when they were just messing around to get a rhythm going and went into “okay, I think we’re ready to try” mode, Adams said “nah, we got it, that was good” and they just went with what they did.

Only one song is over two minutes long, and the whole second half of the EP is pretty amazing. Very screechy, heavy, angry and totally out of it. If I had any doubts about the improvisationality(??) of it, it was quelled by the random bits of speech and screw-ups you can hear—most amusingly Patrick trailing off at the end of the closing track, “Caffeine Cold”. He recorded outside, and some man walking by was grinning at the way he slurred a few of his final lines, spurring Patrick to go off on a drunken tangent telling the man not to laugh at him and that it’s a very serious thing.

This EP sounds, to me, exactly like what it is: Fall Out Boy going back to their punk roots, but with the actual skills they’ve developed rather than the “I have no idea what we’re doing” skillset that caused their first several releases to be such uninspiring pop punk. It’s pretty great.

[Snupes]

American Beauty/American Psycho
Studio Album


Recorded: 2014
Released: 16 January 2015

Band lineup

Patrick Stump (lead vocals, guitars, keyboards, atdditional programming, percussion)
Pete Wentz (bass guitar)
Joe Trohman (guitars, lap steel, additional programming, keyboards)
Andy Hurley (drums, percussion)
Jake Sinclair (additional percussion, programming, backing vocals, keys)
Michael Bolger (horns on "Irresistible")

All tracks authored (except where noted) primarily by Pete Wentz (with band input) and composed by Fall Out Boy.

1. Irresistible (3:36)
2. American Beauty/American Psycho (Wentz, Sebastian Akchoté-Bozovic, Nikki Sixx) (3:15)
3. Centuries (Wentz, Jonathan Rotem, Michael J. Fonseca, Raja Kumari, Justin Tranter, Suzanne Vega) (3:51)
4. The Kids Aren't Alright (4:20)
5. Uma Thurman (Wentz, Jake Sinclair, Waqaas Hashmi, Jarrel Young, Liam O'Donnell, Jack Marshall, Bob Mosher) (3:31)
6. Jet Pack Blues (2:59)
7. Novocaine (3:46)
8. Fourth of July (Wentz, Ryan Lott, Sinclair) (3:44)
9. Favorite Record (3:23)
10. Immortals (3:09)
11. Twin Skeleton's (Hotel in NYC) (3:40)

Review

My journey has finally come to an end. I’m not sure how I feel. In some aspects, this record is a big improvement on Save Rock and Roll. In others, it’s a big step back. When the songs are more pushing boundaries, they’re great. But when they’re not…

“Irresistible” is a good start; it’s very different from their usual stuff and Patrick’s vocals have a swagger I’d only heard before on PAX AM Days. I was hoping that meant they’d taken some cues from that EP, both stylistically and in terms of putting together music. It almost feels like they’re reinventing old Fall Out Boy, but…

The title track, “American Beauty/American Psycho” is more modern than anything they’ve made before. Blurring the lines between electronic music and rock at times, it’s a sort of scathing view of what it’s like to be in love in America. The way love is put on this unachievable pedestal, how the idea of love is this perfect, fairytale romance with a perfect, Photoshopped princess. How you, the poor boy pining for such a princess, are not cool enough, manly enough, handsome and/or rugged enough for her. Expectations, realizations and imagination. The American dream.

“Centuries” is one of the oddball greats. It’s got such an epic feel to it; it’s just a huge song, one that feels grand and adventurous. “You will remember me for centuries”, Patrick shouts with all the intensity he can muster, and I can almost believe him with that sort of inspired rage. Which is bizarre, given that one of the driving piece of the song is a sample from “Tom’s Diner” (do do do do, do doodoo do…you know the one).

“The Kids Aren’t Alright” is a pretty pretty but also pretty sad piece. It’s not all that “together”, it’s a bit vague, but I think it’s a pretty straightforward tale from its title. Most notable in it for me is the line “It twists my head a bit to think/All those people in those old photographs I’ve seen are dead”, if mainly because that’s a bit of a stomach-wrenching feeling/thought I’ve had before. “Uma Thurman” is just a fun song, with another bizarre sample (this time the TV theme song for “The Munsters”).

“Jet Pack Blues” could have been a really pretty song, but it’s betrayed by its simplicity. It’s a simple reminiscing about a relationship that was and no longer is, backed by pretty standard music. “Novocaine”, however, is a very angry song backed by very non-standard angry, distorted “na na na”s. Fall Out Boy seems to be at their best when singing about things that piss them off, and this just drives home the point. Singing once again about the way modern life has made real love feel numb, and distorted our emotions and feelings to the point that we feel practically nothing in comparison to what we’re told we’re supposed to feel. Patrick has some great rawr vocals here.

Then the album takes a nosedive into a few seriously forgettable tracks. “Fourth of July” and “Favorite Record” aren’t even worth talking about. They’re very standard pop with a slight tinge of rock to them. Bleh. “Immortals” is a bit better, but you can almost tell it was written to be a film’s token “big name song” on its soundtrack (in this case, Big Hero 6).

More sentimentally, my journey comes to an end with “Twin Skeleton’s (Hotel in NYC).” It could have closed on a better note. Well, not literally, since the ending to the song is actually my favourite part (a haunting [I use that word a lot], wordless outro). This is a good song, but it highlights one of my least favourite things about this album, in that it’s very repetitive. Not only does it strictly follow the VCVCBCC format (sometimes even going VCVCBCBCBC or VCVCCCCC), but it has a lot of Patrick repeating lyrics (“I love the way, I love the way, I love the way you hurt me, baby”, “hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on”, “the kids aren’t al-, kids aren’t alright”, “I can work a, I can work a miracle” and later “the blood, the blood, the blood of the lamb”…you get the idea). It’s tiring, and it just feels like filling time because they don’t have as much to say. The lyrics are rarely as biting as they used to be, and I rarely felt any emotion other than anger. If a song wasn’t brimming with anger, even under the surface, it was just poppy. At least their older stuff contained sadness and joy, ecstasy and despair, both ends of the spectrum and many things between.

It’s safe to say I’m disappointed with this album, but, weirdly, I do like it considerably. About half of it feels like continued evolution, it’s just such a letdown that the other half or so didn’t continue that, rather feeling like it succumbed to the pop music formula for success. Which sucks, because, as much as they have always been somewhat pop, it’s never felt like they’ve tried to be, or like they ever went out of their way to make songs that would sell. I don’t know if they’ve done it consciously here, but they’ve done it nonetheless. It’s a shame. I’ll continue to enjoy the album, as it’s very good on its own, but I hope their next is more cohesively a step forward. They said they wanted to, one day, make rock’s Yeezus, and I’d love to see them give it a serious shot.

[Ghost of V]

Yay it's over

[Snupes]

Pretty much my same reaction. It was fun. :]