Following the success that last album "From Under The Cork Tree" enjoyed, Pete Wentz and cohorts have returned with an album at once familiar yet different.
When an artist the calibre of Jay-Z intros the lead song from your new album, dedicating it to both the people who didn’t believe and the fans who have made the band what they are today, then you know you’ve truly arrived. Yet it can also be a sign of a band accepting that they are still a relatively niche outfit, trying to appeal to a wider audience. Such is life for Fall Out Boy on their new, much-anticipated release Infinity On High, the follow-up to their breakthrough album From Under The Cork Tree. And if fans liked their penchance for overlong subtitles, that continues in abundance here.
The opening track, Thriller, is the natural continuation of the likes of Sugar, We’re Going Down and Dance Dance from their last album. With the afore-mentioned Jay-Z speaking over a gentle intro, the trademark Fall Out Boy drum and driving bass explosion leads into an atypical Pete Wentz composition. At once both immediate and hook-laden, this is just what everyone has come to expect from Wentz et al.
However, second track, The Take Over, The Break’s Over, is an interesting mish-mash of styles. Opening like a new song from British funk popster Jamiroquai, it takes a slapping bass line and attaches it to a tune that wouldn’t be out of place on a Hall and Oates record. An interesting aside to Dance Dance, and a surprisingly welcome inclusion.
Current single This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race follows, and this is a slice of pure dance-floor indie, with possibly just a hint of Maroon 5 poking through, before the chorus hits with an all-out guitar assault. Although sounding like the Fall Out Boy their fans have come to love and their detractors have come to hate, this song shows a new maturity in the songwriting of Wentz. Whether this is because it shows the band willing to experiment with decade-old samples to provide the backing track or not, it does bode well for further experimentation on future releases, and protection from staleness creeping into their music.
Another example of this is on the Babyface-produced I'm Like a Lawyer the Way I Keep Trying to Get You Off (Me and You). This is surely a strong contender for the next single release – it has the hooks that Fall Out Boy are so accomplished at, yet at the same time it has a maturity that only the likes of the multi-talented Babyface can bring to a project.
If there is a weakness on the album, it’s on tracks like Hum Hallelujah. Opening with a riff not too dissimilar to the massive single Sugar, We’re Going Down, it feels like a song that should have been on the last album, and not the natural progression that subsequent releases should be aiming for. Although fans should still be comfortable with it, such is the immediately recognisable sound on display.
Maybe this is the problem facing Fall Out Boy. On the one hand, they have their dedicated fans for which they can do no wrong. On the other, they have the severely critical opponents who put them down as a one-man show, an old dog who refuses to learn new tricks. Although it could be argued that the difference of styles on this new release are an attempt to appeal to a wider audience, perhaps it will take Wentz to allow more songwriting duties to be shared on the next album before they can truly be classed as accepted.
