Fall Out Boy - 'America's Suitehearts'
Fall Out Boy's new album, 'Folie A Deux', is very, very good. I know this is true because myself and Fraser had a discussion about this very thing, only the other day and also because when I heard this was the new single, I immediately thought "Aw, rubbish! It could have been 'Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet' or '(Coffee's For Closers)' or 'She's My Winona' or 'What A Catch, Donnie' or 'The (Shipped) Gold Standard'" and then thought about it a bit more and realised that although all of those songs are technically better than this, this is still a four-star song.
In an album of intense Pete/Patrick tension* (like all Fall Out Boy's albums, but here it's claustrophobic and even more overt than usual) the two singles stand out as being slightly more whole-band-inclusive.
The lyrics are things they've played with before (in fact 'I Don't Care' is very much lyrically '...Arms Race' a few years on and the same goes for this and 'Thnks Fr Th Mmrs') in terms of being about celebrity, fans, fakers, hating your own celebrity, hating your fans, hating fakers, hating yourself because you think you might be turning into a faker; basically a whole lot of hate. These aren't unique to Pete and Patrick though, of course and they address things levelled at the whole band and maybe that's why these two have been the singles over (in my opinion) better songs, since it must be hard for Fall Out Boy to resist addressing the media storm that constantly dogs them.
On this album they've really managed to strike the balance between 'old' Fall Out Boy, punky riffs and certain juvenile romance and 'new' Fall Out Boy, or basically what happened on 'Infinity On High'. This song has its tensions drawn by the strings at the start, made edgy by the apparently relaxed verse and then nearly reassuringly erased by the punky chorus, only to come right back in and creep you the hell out.
It's a showcase for Patrick's voice on some levels, but also the big romantic anthem, playing of course on the fact it's not romantic in the slightest and is really rather upset and stressed about everything. The tensions contained on the rest of the album aren't so much absent from this as simply slightly glazed over, so you could mistake this, if you didn't listen to the lyrics, for a send-it-all-to-hell anthem for summer youth, roadtripping through a few mistakes. And then you'd hear the lyrics halfway to Mexico and think "...uh, damn, did we bring any other CDs?"
So, while this isn't necessarily the single I wanted and isn't necessarily what i'd call totally representative of the album, it's still a deceptive piece of genius, catchy as you'd expect and self-absorbedly outrospective ("but what will they think?" is a common theme here) lyrically as all Fall Out Boy's songs. Just so long as they do actually release 'Headfirst...' soon.
Download: Out now
CD Released: January 19th
(Hazel Robinson)
*No I don't mean that like in dodgy internet fanfiction. Well, not just like in dodgy internet fanfiction, anyway.
Comment number 1.
At 27th Jan 2009, altproggeek wrote:All of Fall Out Boy's Tracks are great, though I tend to like the none "single" track better then the radio tracks. They remind me of a band in Los Angeles called Oedipus. www.oedipusband.com. Their single tracks are catchy, but never as good as the other album tracks.
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