It’s been over 5 years since Fall Out Boy launched MANIA, an experimental — and divisive — album that tapped into pop components greater than any of their earlier releases. In that point, pop music has swung again round to an appreciation of pop punk and emo, and a extra expansive and numerous tackle what different music is. So is the band’s newest report, So Much (For) Stardust, a comeback or a continuation?
The reply is neither. Despite this being Fall Out Boy’s first Fueled By Ramen launch since their 2003 debut, Take This To Your Grave, and their reunion with Neal Avron, who produced three of the band’s albums from 2005’s From Under the Cork Tree to 2008’s Folie à Deux, members had been fast to vocalize that this wasn’t a “throwback” or “return to form.” It’s not a pure pop-punk album like their debut, nevertheless it’s not fairly the pop mission MANIA was. So Much (For) Stardust has shades of Infinity on High and Folie à Deux on it, however there’s rather a lot about it that feels new.
Read extra: Every Fall Out Boy album ranked: From worst to greatest
It’s extra of an alternate timeline, as vocalist Patrick Stump described it in an interview: “I wanted to imagine what would it have sounded like if we had made a record right after Folie à Deux instead of taking a break for a few years. It was like exploring the multiverse.” His phrases echo the hypothesis of the title observe (“In another life, you were the sunshine of my lifetime”) and the remorse of “Fake Out” (“We all started out as shiny dimes/But we all got flipped too many times/We did it for futures that never came/And for pasts that we’re never gonna change”).
Stump talked about how he wished to recreate the “urgency” of Folie à Deux, and that sense of immediacy runs by the entire album, just like the accelerating bridge of “Hold Me Like a Grudge.” “One day every candle’s gotta run out of wax/One day no one will remember me when they look back/Can’t stop can’t stop till we catch all your ears though/Somewhere between Mike Tyson and Van Gogh,” Stump confesses on “Flu Game,” a tune with a propulsive beat that encapsulates that very same feeling.
Infinity and Folie integrated orchestral components, however So Much (For) Stardust dials it up, and the tracks that embrace it wholeheartedly are the strongest, most absolutely realized and grandiose on the report — and really feel like on the spot Fall Out Boy staples within the custom of “Thnks Fr Th Mmrs” and “The Phoenix.” The string- and piano-led introduction of lead single and album opener “Love From The Other Side” units the tone, whereas strings and brass collide with a rousing depth on dramatic “I Am My Own Muse.” Foreboding “So Much (For) Stardust” equally places the orchestra entrance and middle. The title observe’s refrain is each triumphant and remorseful, as Stump repeats “thought we had it all” with an rising earnestness and heart-wrenching desperation that it appears like he’s about to spiral uncontrolled — however stops in need of it.
It’s a various report. Pop influences peek by on songs like “Fake Out” and “Heartbreak Feels So Good.” One of the album’s standout tracks, “Heaven, Iowa,” is a extra advanced and compelling return to the moody, synth-filled environment of MANIA, with a climbing melody that sparks chills.
The largest surprises are the disco, soul and funk influences on songs like “Hold Me Like A Grudge” and “What A Time to Be Alive.” The latter tune, together with Motown-tinged “So Good Right Now,” don’t fairly quantity to contemporary and authentic takes on these genres. There are additionally songs, like “The Kintsugi Kid (Ten Years),” “Heartbreak Feels So Good” and “Flu Game,” which might be simply eclipsed by the album’s brighter moments.
Underneath the style exploration, there is a renewed emphasis on guitars. Joe Trohman’s thrives give the songs a novel aptitude as he shreds by the bridge of “I Am My Own Muse,” whereas the guitars wail within the refrain on haunting “Heaven, Iowa.” Even the disco-tinged “What A Time to Be Alive” has a guitar solo.
The album additionally marks the return of Pete Wentz’s spoken-word efficiency, this time given its personal observe, “Baby Annihilation,” which encapsulates the album’s extra cataclysmic themes. So Much (For) Stardust is filled with references to “the apocalypse” and “the end of the world,” however they dwell alongside moments of optimism. “So Good Right Now” and “What A Time to Be Alive” are deceptively upbeat whereas conveying much less sunny concepts. “I got this doom and gloom, but I feel all right,” Stump sings on “So Good Right Now.” “Heaven, Iowa” maybe sums up the album’s outlook one of the best: “I closed my eyes inside of your darkness/And found your glow.”
There’s an understanding that the darkish and the sunshine, ache and happiness, the dangerous and the nice are inextricably tangled collectively. There’s an inevitability and a necessity to it, as “Love From The Other Side” describes, “The kind of pain you feel to get good in the end.” “Flu Game” and the title observe examine ache to a present, and because the opening and shutting tracks pose, “What would you trade the pain for? I’m not sure.”
“I really like juxtapositions and contradictory things; I think it’s so human,” Wentz mentioned in an interview. For every part previous, there’s one thing new, and for each horn part, there’s a blazing guitar riff. This is what Fall Out Boy have all the time achieved — by wit and distinction, confession and contradiction, captured one thing very actual about being alive.
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