Music reviews: Fall Out Boy; Joey Bada$$; Mikky Ekko
Chicago pop punkers Fall Out Boy make a speedy return after regrouping in 2013 and promising to Save Rock and Roll, with a sixth album of candy floss grandstanding.
American Beauty/American Psycho
Island Records
Chicago pop punkers Fall Out Boy make a speedy return after regrouping in 2013 and promising to Save Rock and Roll, with a sixth album of candy floss grandstanding.
On American Beauty/American Psycho, the boys deliver more of their anthemic teenage confessions at breakneck speed. Lead single Centuries mashes up the intro to Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner with their trademark synthed-up disco rock, frontman Patrick Stump insisting: “Some legends are told/ Some turn to dust or to gold/ But you will remember me/ Remember me for centuries”.
Despite their punkish fist-pumps FOB still manage to make Maroon 5 sound like Motorhead, and bassist Peter Wentz’s lyrics are as deep as a five-year-old’s poetry competition – for example, on the title track Stump gets to sing “I’m the best worst thing that hasn’t happened to you yet”.
Listening to the album in its entirety is physically exhausting.
As a complete album it grates on the nerves, but take any one of these 11supersonic tracks on their own and you’ll find a bombastic hit single that’ll be played to death in teenagers’ bedrooms the world over.