Remember 2005? I do. Angela Merkel assumed office. YouTube was founded. I was in the fifth grade. It was also the year that Fall Out Boy released its second album, "From Under the Cork Tree," including lead single "Sugar, We're Goin Down."
Oh, how times have changed. Phrases like "Pop punk or die!" or "defend pop punk" still ring out from those who want to emote their nostalgia for that year. That's all that comes to mind when I listen to FOB's latest album, "American Psycho/American Beauty," which dropped on Jan. 20.
The new album is a testament to this band's cockroach-like ability to form and re-form against the backdrop of ever-shifting trends and cultural movements. I mean, Fall Out Boy is even touring with Wiz Khalifa this summer in a tour called “The Boys of Zummer.”
I'll be honest, I'm not an avid listener of the '00s-era band. I still think there's something to be learned from the new album. FOB has changed with the times. I have two words to describe the new album: Manufactured and tight. Most of the tracks are dirges on relationships, good and bad. No news there, as far as musical themes go. The interesting way the album presents these problems, however, is where the action's at. The title track, "American Beauty/American Psycho" laments a narrator's perceived heartbreak with the lines "I think I'm falling in love again / But it could just be too much cough medicine." It's those cute rhymes (and a littering of clichés) that propel this album along. Going with that cute Americana theme that so many artists capitalize on, "Fourth of July" etches catchy (and absurd) lines with "You and I were, you and I were fire, fire, fireworks" and "You were my Versailles at night." "Centuries," a track released last fall, sounds all too familiar. It's because it's the official WWE Smackdown song. Before it was used to promote faux blood and gore on cable, the prominent sample at the beginning of the track was its own song — "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega. This album, however, uses a sample sung by LOLO. So, to summarize that, a band sampled a cover of a song originally released in 1987. Welcome to 2015, folks.
“@wendyrollins: @suzyv did Fall Out Boy just sample Tom's Diner or were you in studio with them?” A girl named Lolo I believe did the singin — Suzanne Vega (@suzyv) September 19, 2014
I'm not really a fan of this type of random sampling. It's just a way to get people who might hear this on the radio — vapidly, that is — to recognize and identify with this song.
Confusingly, there's a track titled "Uma Thurman" on this album. I guess it's an homage to her role in "Pulp Fiction" given the retro styles used, reminiscent of the famous diner scene in that movie. I kind of want to meet this girl who "wants to dance like Uma Thurman" and find out exactly why the singer "can't get her out of (his) head."
Finally, another standout on the album is "Irresistible." I can't get over how undeniably paradoxical this song is. It takes something potentially sentimental and ruins it with absurdity. One pair of lines that accurately captures the reality of unhealthy relationships and the absurdity of the lyrics: "You're second hand smoke, second hand smoke / I breathe you in, but honey I don't know what you're doing to me."
It's pretty common to have been in relationships that, as Lana del Rey (perhaps more accurately, if problematically) puts it "he hit me, but it felt like a kiss." Metaphorically, the irresistible nature of this situation has to be treated without being crude.
Read our review of "Ultraviolence" here!
At the end of this album, I was dealing with both the psychotic and the beautiful of the songs contained within.
While there's certain potentially beautiful questions asked, the way that they are posed and the potential answers on the album leaves me laughing at the band's attempt at recapturing a 2005-era innocence that's long gone down swinging.
Tell the reporter how pop punk will outlive him at pnorthfe@asu.edu or follow @peternorthfelt on Twitter.
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