Album Review: Fall Out Boy - So Much (For) Stardust

There has always been an air of inauthenticity to Fall Out Boy's music. That was true during their classic era, where the sarcasm and wordplay of their lyrics pointed to them being assholes in a way I don't think they (or at least three of them) were. They hid what they were saying, if they were saying anything at all, under a facade as thick as the eyeliner the emo scene was famous for. That carried over to their post-hiatus work, where the drastic shift into being pop-chasing hit-makers never felt like they were the same band at all. It culminated in "Mania", which was so desperate to sound modern, I don't know if anyone actually thought that was who these people are at the core of their musical hearts.

And so, hearing this record is a 'return to form', and the record that could have come after "Folie A Deux", that inauthenticity rears its head again. After fifteen years of doing anything but sounding like Fall Out Boy, to revert back to what they were after a collosal flop of a record feels like them doing what they think they need to in order to stay relevant.

I'm not complaining about that, by the way. I cared so little about Fall Out Boy during the second act of their career, having them sound like what I remember is gift enough for me. If all they wind up doing is giving me musical comfort food, that's just fine. But do they do more than that?

I find it interesting that an album where the band gets back together with their own sound is preoccupied with heartbreak. Lyrically, these songs are a breakup album, but musically, it's an album about getting back with an ex. I don't think that was intentional at all, but it's fascinating psychology how the end of one phase can send us back to the comfort of something old and familiar. Did we change for the wrong reasons, or are we reverting back to see if there was another path we could have taken instead? We don't always get answers to these questions.

Fall Out Boy does come close to answering them on this album. This is a return to the past, but within the context of years of evolution. The guitars are back in full force, but this is no rehash of their classic trilogy of albums. These songs are not emo or pop/punk in that way. This is still an album written in the more pop-leaning style of their later work, but dressed up to more closely resemble Fall Out Boy. In that sense, it's exactly what the band was aiming for; an album that could serve as the transition between their eras we never got to hear.

What this album tells me is that it was primarily the abruptness of their change, and not the pop songwriting itself, that killed the Fall Out Boy so many of us loved. "Heaven, Iowa" isn't any different than "Centuries" was, but there's more to the arrangement that connects the song to who Fall Out Boy used to be. When you sever the connection with the audience all at once, you lose much of the benefit of the doubt. When it frays on its own, people are able to hold on longer, so they might just make it far enough to reach the other side with you.

I'm not saying if this record had come out after "Folie A Deux" we would have all kept loving Fall Out Boy all along. We would have better understood what they were doing, though, and that can at least make the disappointment easier to handle. That works in reverse, as well. This record is rebounding from such a low point that nearly anything it does that sounds better will be viewed as a miracle.

It's easily the best Fall Out Boy album in fifteen years, but it isn't a great Fall Out Boy album. The lyrics rarely have the clever snark of the past, instead sounding sincere in a voice that has never once shown it can be such. The songwriting has hooks, but the pop kind that don't have the propulsive energy of their best work. I don't know if I would say any song on this record would be rated above more than one or two songs from the entire "From Under The Cork Tree", "Infinity On High", and "Folie A Deux' trilogy. Being better than "Save Rock & Roll" or "Mania" isn't an honor.

That leaves me feeling torn about how I feel. On the one hand, it's nice to have a Fall Out Boy album I can listen to and not feel depressed about. On the other hand, I'm still disappointed by how much of a gap remains between where they once were and where they now are. But maybe I should have expected that all along. When you wrap your album in a cover that looks like a piss-take, you're clearly not fully invested in doing something great. And this isn't.

Fall Out Boy is back, but like an old candy they had to reformulate to meet the current nutritional standards. Is that what we want, or would we have been better off letting go and moving on?