album review: 'save rock and roll' by fall out boy

From the majority of people I've spoken to, here's the general consensus: if you're my age, you're expected to hate Fall Out Boy.

Well, that's not entirely the case - you're supposed to have some general distaste for the 'emo/scene' culture that began in the early 2000s and lasted until about 2009, at least within the mainstream music scene. Brought upon by what has been coined as 'the death of irony' in the wake of 9/11, the eruption of acts like Jimmy Eat World, The All-American Rejects, Simple Plan, My Chemical Romance, Marianas Trench, Panic! At The Disco, and yes, Fall Out Boy, was the 'rock music' paradigm on the Hot 100, battling it out with post-grunge and the brief indie rock spurt in 2004. These bands ruled the airwaves during my teenage years, and while I never went emo and sported the skinny jeans and bad haircuts and dye jobs, I knew a lot of people who did. But when placed in comparison to the more 'mature' indie rock that has sprung up after the club boom, most people my age have dismissed the  pop rock of the past decade as 'inconsequential', 'pissy', 'self-obsessed', or, more generally, 'shit'.

Now I could make the comment that most music aimed at teenagers can be described as such: the garage rock of the 70s, the synthpop of the 80s, and yes, the grunge explosion and punk revival of the 90s all had their fair share of self-obsessed whinging and whining. Hell, Green Day covered two separate decades of it with their breakthrough in the 90s and their massive comeback with American Idiot in 2004. And like those decades, there is a fair share of great, good, mediocre, and shit music that came out of the pop rock of the early 2000s. Yes, there was a lot of awful, but all things considered, I'd rather listen to Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco over Three Days Grace, Seether, and Theory Of A Deadman any day of the goddamn week.

So yeah, I'll come out and say it: even today, with the benefit of hindsight and a couple of years since their boom in the mid-2000s, I like Fall Out Boy. Like their label-mates and partners in style Panic! At The Disco, both acts liked to blend a variety of musical styles and intricately constructed lyrics into a theatrical explosion, and I'd argue both bands got better as the years went on. Panic! At The Disco followed their Canadian counterparts Marianas Trench by drawing influences from the past and exploring bigger concepts for album statements that actually turned out to be pretty damn awesome. No, I'm serious: for late-period pop rock, Panic! At The Disco pulled a Brian Wilson-esque style shift for 2008's Pretty, Odd and 2011's Vices & Virtues, and Marianas Trench blew their theatrical stylings up to eleven with 2009's superb Masterpiece Theater and the interesting concept album in 2011 Ever After. Seriously, check all four of these albums out, they're all excellent and highly recommended.

Fall Out Boy, meanwhile... sort of went away.

Well, that's not quite true. They reached their commercial breakthrough a little earlier than the other acts, with From Under The Cork Tree in 2005, and achieved massive success with their follow-up Infinity On High in 2007, although due to the turbulence in the music industry, it didn't quite sell as well. And their next record, Folie a Deux, a hard-edged bit of brilliant societal commentary, sold even worse, even though many critics thought it was their best album (I think poor sales could also be linked to the fact that the pop rock boom was entering its downward slide). But after its poor performance, the band disappeared for five years, with the members going onto solo projects with mixed levels of success. In the mean time, pop rock vanished, the club boom happened, and the teenagers who adored acts like Fall Out Boy began to dismiss or ridicule the band in disparaging terms.

And really, I don't entirely blame them. Fall Out Boy achieved mainstream success at the height of the boom, and unlike Green Day, lyricist Pete Wentz's self-obsession initially lacked the social commentary or level of grandiose angst to make it accessible. That was always the interesting thing about Fall Out Boy - their musical themes and delivery were self-obsessed to the point of narcissism, but there wasn't that same level of whininess or 'my life is pain' thematic elements, particularly in comparison to My Chemical Romance. If anything, that's why I think Fall Out Boy's music has aged better than that of most of its peers - while the self-absorption might seem adolescent, it's more tolerable without the teenage insufferability that came with acts like Simple Plan.

People still hated Fall Out Boy for that self-absorption, though, and Fall Out Boy was more often than not lumped in and dismissed with the rest of the emo/scene acts - which, the more I think about it, isn't really an apt comparison when it comes to the music. Fall Out Boy tended towards more genre hopping and exploration, particularly on their later albums, and the lyrics were certainly more thought-provoking. But they wore the same 'scene/emo' image, and they did share a fanbase with the other acts - which is where I think the majority of the hatred of the band is really directed. It's not about hating Fall Out Boy as much as it's about hating the people who were fans of Fall Out Boy, and hating the subculture that Fall Out Boy contributed to with their image and their self-absorption.

Now, granted, Fall Out Boy had its fair share of problems. I'd argue there isn't as much consideration of melody in their songs as there should be, and Patrick Stump's voice could get annoying. But, let's make this statement: Pete Wentz is of the reason people hated Fall Out Boy. Partially because of his lyrics that tried too hard to be clever (and yet occasionally were pretty clever), partially because he did that terrible cover of Michael Jackson's 'Beat It' with John Mayer (yeah, that happened), and partially because Wentz has a monstrous ego. Kanye West has come out and said that Fall Out Boy is one of his favourite bands, and I can see why: both acts are completely invested in telling the story that is them and them only. Fortunately, Wentz had more common sense than Kanye (although one could argue about levels of talent) and was willing to talk about more interesting subjects on Folie a Deux, and while he did frame it all through his perspective, he at least had enough personality to make the story compelling.

But now five years have past, and Fall Out Boy has come out of the smoke of the club boom (which, if the charts are any indication, has finally shuddered to a dead halt) to save rock and roll with their album titled Save Rock And Roll. A title that immediately earned the expected eye-rolls and exasperated snorts from every music critic on the planet. And frankly, I was one of them. Yeah, I like Fall Out Boy, but I know Pete Wentz' head is up his own ass, and with the boom of indie rock, right now, I'm having a hard time believing rock needs saving.

So, does Fall Out Boy convince me?

album review: 'tre!' by green day

I almost didn’t even have the heart to start the album.

Those of you who have read my previous reviews (here and here) can understand why. Green Day’s phenomenally misguided attempt to construct an epic three album trilogy was disheartening to hear about and even worse to actually listen through, and after the general heap of mediocre shit that was Dos!, I honestly didn’t want to give Green Day a third chance at success here. And while I still can say I like Green Day’s older work, the more I listened to Uno! and Dos!, the more I felt the charm and shine rub off of those old albums I loved as I knew that Green Day wouldn’t produce anything close to being that good again.

But then I paused and reconsidered that opinion, because according to initial press junkets, Green Day’s Tre! was going to be an exploration of the arena rock styling they had adapted for American Idiot and with greater success in 21^st Century Breakdown. Now, a lot of Green Day fans really dislike 21^st Century Breakdown, and I understand why. It’s haphazard, it’s unfocused, it’s broadly political, and it doesn’t really have much of a definite target – in other words, it’s the only possible political album anyone could have expected from the perpetually adolescent Billie Joe Armstrong, but I digress.

Of course, the critics also disliked 21^st Century Breakdown because it took a great deal of influence from The Beatles and The Who and The Ramones and other classic rock/punk rock acts, almost to the point where certain songs sound suspiciously like covers (‘Last Night On Earth’ being particularly egregious). But if I’m being honest, it’s never bothered me all that much because Green Day had enough signature style and flair to make the songs uniquely theirs while still paying homage to the greats.

So while I had absolutely no faith that Tre! would actually work, I did have the slightest hope that Green Day might be able to pull out of their downward spiral and produce something. I mean, you hope for the best, expect the worst, right? Maybe Green Day had remembered something they learned from 21^st Century Breakdown, right?

album review: 'dos!' by green day

You know, sometimes it really sucks to know a lot of music.

I understand that's probably one of the whitest, most hipster-esque things I could possibly say here, a statement that practically epitomizes 'first-world problems'. I mean, look at how that statement looks: 'Aww, look at Silens, he's bitching because he just knows about too much music because he has the free time and energy to listen to album after album. Yeah, I know I had a tiny violin stashed somewhere...'

I get how it looks - but I also can't deny that there is some rationale behind my feeling here. It's the feeling you get when you have submerged yourself in an interest so completely that nothing - nothing - surprises you anymore. It's the movie critic who can call every plot twist in the conventional family movie he's obliged to see, the TV critic who knows every beat of the filler episode, the video game critic playing a rehash or a remake without the slightest vestige of innovation. It's a really depressing feeling, because  the surprise has leaked from the experience. That thrill of discovering something new, that heady rush of excitement... it just fades away when you realize everything is going to be rote and by the numbers. 

It gets even worse when you know that you can squint slightly and directly trace the lineage of the art you're looking at to its ancestor, that you know exactly what they're building off of or ripping off. It's why so many professional critics get so damn excited when they see original IPs with interesting, fresh ideas, even if those IPs might not objectively be all that well-executed. They can overlook the slipshod nature or the shoestring budget or the clumsy story or the lousy production - it's something new!

Green Day isn't something new. And when I picked up their newest album Dos! in their trilogy of albums they are releasing in the last months of 2012, I had the sinking feeling that I could predict pretty much exactly what was coming. Considering that the first of the trilogy, Uno!, had basically been a recycling of their previous, better material - and not a good recycling, at that - I had low expectations going into this. Particularly when I heard that the album was basing itself on garage rock, and it's not easy to make material from that genre sound unique or interesting, or at least not completely done to death (punk/garage rock fans, settle the fuck down, I'll come back to this). And considering Green Day's penchant for recycling, I didn't have anything close to high hopes.

But then that irritatingly optimistic voice, the one that justifies my liking for S Club 7 and Aqua and Toby Keith and the Backstreet Boys and Panic! At The Disco, popped up and said, 'Silens, you loved 21st Century Breakdown even despite the fact the majority of the tracks were direct riffs from The Who and The Beatles and The Ramones! You defended that album because Green Day was at least attempting to build off of the material of the past in new ways with new themes and styles. And sure, while the thematic elements on 21st Century Breakdown didn't entirely work - at all - the album was still solid enough to appreciate the disparate elements as much as the whole!'

And that was true, I mused, as I started listening to Dos!. Indeed, you could never accuse Green Day of too much original thought. They aren't like Muse, who throw every good and terrible idea they've ever had onto their albums to see what sticks (basically my opinion of The 2nd Law in a nutshell, by the way). No, Green Day has always built their genre-exploratory material off of the punk and protopunk and arena rock of the past, which is at least a solid foundation. But what has always distinguished them from being deliberate ripoffs is that they actually do take a different reinterpretation of the basic structures from whence they build. Sometimes it works, sometimes it really doesn't.

And here...

I honestly thought Uno! was as bad as it could get for Green Day. I was wrong.

album review: 'uno!' by green day

I was afraid of this happening.

I mean, when I heard that Green Day was planning on putting out a trilogy of albums - and planning on doing so all within about six months of each other, my immediate reaction was disbelief. They would have that much material that was ready for prime-time? They would be able to construct three whole albums based upon material recorded over about five months? They would have enough things to say to last three entire albums?

And then I realized, with a feeling of crushing dread filling up my stomach, that they wouldn't - they couldn't. As much as I like Green Day - and I do, let's make no mistake about that (favourite album is Kerplunk, followed by 21st Century Breakdown and Dookie) - I knew instinctively that unless they were trying to write to a specific concept, they weren't going to be able to keep everything good. They couldn't stretch it out that far. Even though they divided each of the trilogy into musical themes (the first being power pop/punk, the second being garage rock, the third being stadium rock), I knew that they couldn't have enough great, unique material to span three albums. 

And I'm disappointed to say that my original suspicions were correct. Even worse, I don't think I went far enough - as of right now, Uno! is Green Day's worst album. 

Yeah, worse than Warning. I went there.

album review: 'days go by' by the offspring

Short version: you know what, this is, for once, the easy part. This album is a soulless, worthless, desperate cash-in by a punk band that grew up and lost their edge and sense of humour. If you're a fan, avoid at all costs. If you're not a fan, keep avoiding. 

Long version...

And here we come to the last review in the trifecta of terrible tunes, and despite my general tiredness and antipathy towards people who somehow like this music, those aren't the emotions that dominate my mind right now.

No, right now, I'm just sad. Genuinely disappointed and sad, because of all three albums that I reviewed, this one sucks for the worst possible reasons, reasons that you can't easily dismiss as incompetence.

Guys, The Offspring's Days Go By sucks not because of laziness or arrogance, but because it's an album by a band out of time, struggling desperately to keep up with the times and failing miserably because they just aren't the same people they were ten or fifteen years ago. In short, they grew up, and just aren't fun anymore.