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Punk band's ambition is showing

Fall Out Boy's smart lyrics have won many fans, but maybe it's time to drop the loser persona.

By JOSH KORR
Published February 6, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [AP Photo] Fall Out Boy was the first to hit it big thanks to the social networking Web site MySpace.

Fall Out Boy's Infinity on High would almost make the old punk rockers proud.

True, Fall Out Boy is mostly concerned with the plight of life's wallflowers and the self-aware self-pity that torments them. So many young fans are afflicted, they turned the band into one of the downloading era's breakout stars.

"I'm alright in bed but I'm better with a pen," Patrick Stump sings on the new disc's Fame<Infamy, and all the knowing sulkers sing along.

Small potatoes, compared with the Sex Pistols' ominous songs of creeping fascism. But despite some lingering immaturity, Infinity on High's smart, smart-aleck lyrics and tightly sculpted tunes are part of a wave of albums reclaiming punk's ambition.

The band, which got its start on Florida's Fueled by Ramen label, was the first to hit it big thanks to the social networking Web site MySpace, selling about 3-million copies of 2005's Under the Cork Tree. Impressive, particularly considering that the MySpace crowd supposedly doesn't buy CDs, preferring to download music.

Fall Out Boy's progression of success - pay your dues, catch a break, blow up - seems somehow to be an affront, so the band brings in rapper/label honcho Jay-Z for an introduction that sticks it to the imaginary haters: "We dedicate this album to anybody, people who said we couldn't make it."

Thankfully, the rest of the album isn't that lame. Even the songs that revisit stale topics of celebrity are admirably full of interesting images. "I'm boring but overcompensate with headlines and flash flash flash photography," Stump sings on The Take Over, the Break's Over, the repetition evoking strobed walks past paparazzi.

The snarky kissoff lines are even better. The narrator of Hum Hallelujah has girl trouble, but on his terms: "I thought I loved you; it was just how you looked in the light." The band's persona is lovelorn but never pathetic: "I wrote a goodbye note in lipstick on your arm, when you passed out" (Bang the Doldrums).

These may not be the most mature themes, but consider What's My Age Again by Blink-182, the last blockbuster pop-punkers: "I wore cologne, to get the feeling right. We started making out, and she took off my pants."

In that context, clever antilove songs are a definite step forward, as is Infinity on High's sound.

Stump and Joe Trohman's interlocking riffs on This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race could make any wallflower start grooving. Their syncopated cascades of plinked picking - and a monster chorus - make Bang the Doldrums a sure hit.

Bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz is more famous, thanks to his hookups with starlets, but Stump is the real star. He has a surprisingly high, soulful voice and finds rhythm in mouthfuls of syllables.

But for every good line, there's a meaningless one: "You're a canary, I'm a coal mine. 'Cause sorrow is just all the rage."

Meanwhile, other bands are fulfilling punk ambitions of their own. My Chemical Romance's recent The Black Parade is more musically adventurous, and Green Day's 2004 American Idiot more thematically coherent.

If Fall Out Boy wants to keep pace, toning down the puns would be a good start. If they stop pretending to be losers and let Stump stretch out - now that would really be ambitious.

You can reach Josh Korr at jkorr@sptimes.com.

CD review

Fall Out Boy

Infinity on High

Island

Grade: B+

[Last modified February 5, 2007, 20:06:54]