Returning from hiatus seems to be the hip thing for punk rock bands to do these days – just look at the recent revivals of Blink-182, Cute Is What We Aim For and Phantom Planet. Love ’em or hate ’em, pop-punk band Fall Out Boy is following suit and ready to Save Rock And Roll.
After a little more than three years, word came Feb. 4 that not only is the Chicago-based band to release another album, but that album is already done. Less than two weeks after announcing Save Rock and Roll, Fall Out Boy announced Feb. 14 on their Tumblr page that the release date for the album was moved up from a tentative date in May to a worldwide release April 15 and 16 — all due to the overwhelming response from fans.
If fans were completely surprised by the sound of Fall Out Boy’s new track “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up),” which dropped Feb. 4, chances are they haven’t listened to any of lead vocalist and guitarist Patrick Stump’s solo work. The tracks from Stump’s EP Truant Wave and full-length album Soul Punk don’t fit cleanly into any one genre, but shuffle between synthpop, R&B and dance-punk.
Fall Out Boy bassist and main lyricist Pete Wentz also had a side project during the hiatus. Black Cards, Wentz’s other group, creates the kind of electronic music listeners would expect to hear in a dance club. Wentz and Stump both put their time during the hiatus to good use as a kind of musical workshop rather than a departure from the band, bringing new sounds and influences to Fall Out Boy’s once standard pop-punk sound.
The band explained on their website, “… We never broke up. We needed to plug back in and make some music that matters to us.” It’s not as simple as “plugging back in,” though. They were clearly rusty during their Feb. 13 performance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” – a bit stiff and mechanical, not hitting the notes as hard or as precisely as usual.
But now that they have turned their focus back to Fall Out Boy, it’s only a matter of time and practice before the Chicago boys get their chops back to the level a certain impressionable 16-year-old saw back in 2007.
The show on Kimmel left two big questions for fans: Why were band members glowing in the dark, and why were they dressed as skeletons? Maybe it’s a hint of what to expect concept-wise on their next album. Or there might be no reason. The world may never know. Either way, the costumes were overly quirky and off-putting.
Fans of the band and those who just remember them should get ready, because Fall Out Boy is ready for “The Take Over, The Break’s Over.”
