One of, like, three possible SFW screencaps.
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[5.67]
Anthony Easton: Volcanoes do not become any more or less dangerous depending on their age — it’s kind of random when they go off, from my understanding.
[3]
Alfred Soto: Sneaking the line about making boys next door out of assholes over “Hey Soul Sister” chords is my idea of termite art, but we’ve still got an undeveloped title metaphor and singing too adenoidal for its own good.
[5]
Cecily Nowell-Smith: That little laugh after “how to make boys next door out of assholes”. God, if I’ve learnt one thing from my years in the trenches of eyeliner pop-punk it’s that there’s no conversion happening here. We’re all boys next door and we’re all assholes. We’re all, if you will, both Patrick Stump and Pete Wentz (I’m sure Andy and Joe are happy not being so easily shoved into ill-fitting archetypes). This song here’s on charm offensive, super approachable in the vein of those radiofaces fun. and Train — a bright-eyed anthem rattling along on handclaps and trashcan lids, tuneful, cheerful, hateful. Fall Out Boy have always known how to make a panic attack sound like a victory lap, but this one’s all triumph: all boy-next-door, all asshole.
[9]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: This is the make-or-break moment for FOB circa 2013: Patrick Stump singing, “We will teach you how to make boys next door out of assholes,” and then following it by chuckling to himself. It breaks the secret rule of Fall Out Boy’s music: sell, sell, sell. Their self-awareness was evident in Wentz’s twisty-turny journal dispatches, Stump’s powerhouse voice, their theatrical studio compositions. They sold the hell out of their music, knowing how bonkers it all seemed, understanding that they needed to go big or go home. The Laugh shatters the illusion for an attempt at off-the-cuff honesty, an acknowledgement of the band’s history with scorched-earth moaniness, a intimate peek behind the curtain. While it does all three, it also draws attention to how masterfully Fall Out Boy had maintained the cartoonish illusion of their music until this very point, to the point that it became one of their finest artistic elements. “Young Volcanoes” is the sound of the band as they corpse their well-oiled routine; The Laugh is the sound of Stump deciding to bluff the punchline for once. As their one-time tourmates sang with a mix of disappointment and understanding: I guess this is growing up.
[5]
Crystal Leww: “Young Volcanoes”, like pretty much every song on the new Fall Out Boy album, is a collection of little moments and small things I’ve noticed that I’ve loved: the acoustic guitar serving mostly as some sort of rhythm keeper; handclaps keeping the rhythm throughout the track; the contrast between the two words “Americana” and “exotica”; the fact that they are placed one right after the other; the way that Patrick drags out the “easy” in “make it easy”; the line “we will teach you how to make boys next door out of assholes”; Patrick Stump’s little giggle after that line; the pinging echoes of “we are” by the bandmates in the chorus; and many, many more. Patrick Stump is basically an MVP here; the rest of the band is along for the ride, but it’s really his chance to holler with the full force of his teenage boy personality.
[8]
Brad Shoup: More fun with addition: today, Ke$ha and Billy Joel! The bass is coming through, so that wish is granted. I’m great with one-note piano pings; they’re even more of a delicacy wrapped up in the low end. The chorus is a full triumph, which is fortunate cos this song would be a quarter otherwise. But listen to these white boys marking the loss of empire!
[7]
Edward Okulicz: Although this song is enjoyable enough, how galling must it be to be Pete Wentz right now? He can throw in all the clever lyrical jabs he wants but most of what I remember from the Fall Out Boy record is Patrick Stump going anthemic over wordless crowd chants. Fortunately this shares a characteristic of the rest of the band’s recent output: it’s comfortable in its own emptiness. So comfortable you won’t even notice the barbed wire.
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: Good to see Fall Out Boy continuing to Save Rock And Roll from the Monsters And Men that have, well, taken it in this very direction. Patrick Stump’s voice doesn’t suit it though, whether due to prior associations or just it being a bit loud. Take That put the cap on this microgenre four years ago anyway, before Mumford was even on the scene, never mind his Sons.
[4]
Daisy Le Merrer: I would have guessed rock’n’roll needed saving from Train, not through Train.
[3]