Fall Out Boy – ‘Save Rock And Roll’

You know how you get those bands who were just integral to your music taste as you were growing up? For a lot of people it was Blink-182, for others it was My Chemical Romance, Jimmy Eat World or Taking Back Sunday. For me and a lot of other people it was Fall Out Boy. They were the band I identified with most. I’ve made best friends through this band and I have an awful lot of memories attached to their music. I still remember the day I heard ‘Take This To Your Grave’ for the first time and just knowing that this was the musical path that I wanted to follow.

When Fall Out Boy announced their break, I was gutted, as would any person be who had just found out their favourite band were no longer particularly inclined to make music together. Despite constant rumours and news stories, I never really though I’d get the buzz I got from a FOB album cycle or live show again. But here we are, it’s 2013 and I feel incredibly lucky not only to have seen my favourite band live already this year but also to be listening to some brand new music from them.

First things first, with ‘Save Rock and Roll’ Fall Out Boy haven’t regressed, you shouldn’t come into this album with any hopes of a pop punk revival from the band because you just won’t find it here. ‘Save Rock and Roll’ is the poppiest record yet. It’s everything that ‘Folie A Deux’ SHOULD have sounded like and then some. The opening track is the band;s latest single, ‘The Phoenix’, and it’s huge. A fitting chorus led opener is exactly what this album needed to get going, but it’s the third song in, ‘Alone Together’, that makes the biggest impact out of the opening trio. It’s a big Summer anthem with the bassiest of choruses and a brilliant vocal from Patrick Stump.

Unfortunately, it does seem that as soon as the album starts to get going, it derails. Two tracks that really don’t quite meet the lofty expectations of the record form a double whammy that will see people reaching for the skip buttons. They arrive in the form of track five, ‘Just One Yesterday’, which sounds like Adele’s ‘Rolling In The Deep’ without the big chorus, and then there’s the big old mess that is track six, ‘The Mighty Fall’. There’s nothing to concentrate on in the bazillion things going on here, and the guest vocals from Big Sean add absolutely nothing at all.

Thankfully, from here on in ‘Save Rock and Roll’ comes into its own in a big way. In ‘Miss Missing You’, Pete Wentz’ signature lyrics come to the forefront properly (“Sometimes before it gets better the darkness gets bigger, the person that you take a bullet for is behind the trigger”), and ‘Death Valley’ has next single written all over it. ‘Young Volcanoes’ divided a few when it came out, but it’s hard to deny that it does have a hook that relentlessly drills itself into your head. ‘Rat A Tat’ is fast and laden with urgency, and you can tell the band had an absolute ball recording this one. As a result it has produced one of the best songs on the record.

Closing down the album is title track ‘Save Rock and Roll’. It’s a song that will initially draw instant comparisons with fellow ballad ‘What A Catch Donnie’ from ‘Folie A Deux’, but really they couldn’t be any further apart. When I first listened to the latter, all I remember is feeling sad. It was a song that in my opinion was designed to be their swan song, but ‘Save Rock and Roll’ feels completely different. It’s laced positivity (“oh no, we won’t go, we don’t know when to quit, oh no”) that features a career defining collaboration with Elton John, and the Patrick/Elton vocal combo that ends the song is a fitting finale to a wonderful album. The meeting that managed to make that happened must also have been an amazing one, so imagine that when you’re listening to it.

In general, a massive high point for the album rests in the vocals of Patrick Stump. Whether it’s THAT note in ‘The Phoenix’, the strong falsetto chorus in ‘Death Valley’ or just the general masterclass offered in ‘Alone Together’, it’s clear that he’s upped his game vocally. ‘Save Rock and Roll’ as a whole will draw major comparisons with FOB’s previous effort ‘Folie A Deux’, but there’s one big difference: one album tried too hard to be a pop record and ended up falling short, while the other was almost effortless and absolutely knocked it out of the park. That album is ‘Save Rock and Roll’.

Ultimately, the hiatus/time away from band/split/whatever you want to call it has done Fall Out Boy the world of good. Everything within the band has been re-evaluated, and the song writing process feels reworked – everything sounds more cohesive and fresh for it. ‘Save Rock and Roll’ isn’t without its mistakes, but they’re barely worth mentioning next to the brilliance that surrounds them. This album won’t be for everyone and it will continue to divide just as every Fall Out Boy album before it has done. If you don’t like pop tinged with rock, you won’t like this album and that’s fine. Based on this outing, Fall Out Boy have got a brilliant future lying ahead of them. As for me, I’m just glad to have my favourite band back.

CHRIS MARSHMAN