"Rock And Roll" Alive, Fall Out Boy Happily Takes Credit

Ending a four-year hiatus, Fall Out Boy have come screaming out of obscurity with a new album, the humbly titled “Save Rock And Roll.” Despite a comical band name and an even more comical album name, Fall Out Boy is a complex band. They began as a clean, simple expression of the new millennium’s taste for pop-punk and have ceaselessly reinvented themselves with each new album since their seminal debut, “Take This To Your Grave.” Each successive album would entail new tricks and gimmicks, slowly drawing the band further from its pop-punk roots and deeper into the realm of pop as Fall Out Boy fearlessly pushed the limits of their genre. Their latest release brings their delusions of grandeur to a zenith, but it’s a hell of a ride nonetheless.

“Grave” served as an unadorned schematic of all of the band’s lasting characteristics, from the full-sentence song titles to the slippery wordplay of bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz.  These stood against the simple, unassuming power chords that only pop punk can deliver. To a casual listener of Fall Out Boy, “Save Rock And Roll” sounds miles away from the band’s first effort. And in many respects, this is true. “Grave” was an earnest expression, all screams and muddy distortion, while “Rock And Roll” proudly presents itself as a grand spectacle, wreathed in pristine production and melodrama. But wrapped carefully in all the strings and big-studio sheen, there still lies the heart of these princes of pop-punk.

Subtlety has never been a strong suit of Fall Out Boy’s, but to accuse them of insincerity would be a mistake. An immediate salvo of strings on the opening track of the album removes any doubt as to the depth of Fall Out Boy’s conviction that they are indeed the saviors of rock and roll. Patrick Stump growls, “Put on your warpaint,” and the drums begin to pound as Fall Out Boy makes their case for savior status. Appropriately titled, “The Phoenix” is the beginning of a triumphant return, with Stump shouting, “I’m going to change you like a remix / Then I’ll raise you like a phoenix” as a battle cry and a promise.

Unfortunately, the album cannot maintain the momentum built in the opening track. The second track, “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up),” provides three minutes of interesting ideas, but never really feels like a coherent song of its own—although it provides the most rock-and-roll moment of the album with Stump’s hair-metal scream of “I’m on fiyahhhhh.” Tracks like “Where Did The Party Go” sound like archetypal Fall Out Boy songs with an added veneer of overproduction and tinsel. The classically affecting lyrics like “My old aches become new again, / My old friends become exes again” are undercut somewhat by the persistent synths rattling away in the background.

“The Mighty Fall” is at least unambiguously a departure from Fall Out Boy’s modus operandi, opening with a droll introduction from Big Sean and ending with a similarly droll verse from the rapper that feels so out of place that it seems like a puzzling way of making sure the listener is awake. A similarly strange set of guest vocals is provided by Courtney Love, who sounds surprisingly good for a short verse toward the end of “Rat A Tat,” but still profoundly out of place. Big Sean is too hip-hop for Fall Out Boy,while Love is too punk. The use of these two featured artists feels more like showmanship rather than genuine artistry.

While the album lags when it attempts to straddle the realms of the grandiose and the earnest, it soars when it fully embraces one or the other. “Miss Missing You” is the closest song on this album to  the earnest urgency of “Grave,” with Stump gleefully warbling over a cascade of nostalgic synths, guitar, and a driving rhythm on the drums. At the end of the song, everything but an acoustic guitar and Stump’s vocals falls away, and he sings, “Baby you were my picket fence / I miss missing you now and then.” The pain over a love lost is made all the more poignant as it is expressed in a lonely moment of the musical simplicity that Fall Out Boy has otherwise long since left behind.

Conversely, The titular last track of the album is an indulgent, jubilant affair featuring one Sir Elton John. Stump and John belt out together, “I will defend the faith / going down swinging / I will save the songs / The songs we can’t stop singing,” finally explicitly explaining what on earth Fall Out Boy are trying to say with the album’s title—that “saving rock and roll” means fighting for the songs that they themselves love. In fact, Stump says in no uncertain terms, “You are what you love, / Not who loves you.” Fall Out Boy is not setting out to save a genre, but rather themselves, by playing whatever songs they please, as they have always done and will continue to do, until your breathing stops.

—Staff writer Alexander Tang can be reached at tang@college.harvard.edu.