ft. Lolo as Suzanne Vega…
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[3.92]
Dan MacRae: I’m not looking forward to this playing around the clock during NBA playoff highlight packages.
[2]
Alfred Soto: Damned if I know what the Suzanne Vega does, or why they sound like Whitesnake in 1988 (“You’re a cherry blossom!”?). For a band once fleeter of foot this joyless thud feels like revenge.
[3]
Thomas Inskeep: The Hot Topic in our local mall recently closed and became a Things Remembered. I assume FOB’s fan base is still as faithful as ever. How will they respond to what feels like FOB’s take on MJ’s “Leave Me Alone,” a very clenched-teeth, super-tense record? And will they even know that it’s “Tom’s Diner” being referenced? There are elements of Queen’s bombast here, but channelled much less successfully than, say, Muse, who for all their faults are able to own that kind of arena-rock move in a way that FOB just quite can’t. This is one of the best singles they’ve done in years, but it’s a low bar they’re getting over.
[5]
Micha Cavaseno: From a Suzanne Vega citation to a breakneck dive into a specific sort of blend of trap/emo/metal bombastics that really depress in how try-hard this band has become. Stump is taking an odd amount of cues from late-period Michael Jackson (which, considering how that devolved into a slightly melodic James Brown over unlistenable studio fodder not unlike this song, is not a good progression), and the thud of this band has so little of what can make these guys so cutting available. There’s none of the nerve, none of the nerd; rather we get bold gesture, chin jutting and swooning over one’s own “brilliance”. A sledgehammer, not a scythe.
[0]
Edward Okulicz: This is pod-people Fall Out Boy, by which I mean that while it superficially resembles them, the personality has changed. That change is the complete draining of wit and tension.
[5]
Megan Harrington: If you’d asked me in high school which band I thought was so ubiquitous that it would be a sort of conversational currency for over a decade, I’d have guessed the Strokes. And while I can enjoy a nostalgic look back at my boy band crush, the band that truly inspires gushing among almost anyone I chat up is Fall Out Boy. “Centuries” is a strong continuation of their comeback, further illuminating the overlap between glam rock and emo. Stump via Wentz thunders we’ll remember them for centuries and it seems distinctly possible given all the good will they’ve fostered over their career.
[8]
Tara Hillegeist: Overcooked megalomania is not well-suited to being harped on repeatedly over equally undercooked attempts at making “Rebel Rebel” palatable to the Coldplay generation. Overcooked megalomania is not well-suited to excusing real life cases of uncredited re-recording of a sample (“Tom’s Diner”) they didn’t want to pay a price for using. Overcooked megalomania is not well-suited to their corralling a labelmate (Lolo) to do strikebreakers’ work they then didn’t bother respecting with a namedrop or “featured by” mention. Otherwise this is as blandly shrill and monotonous as all the previous songs following on from their reunion have been; the production, particularly their continued lack of a middle range to balance out the heaving wave of molasses that is whatever Frohman and Stump’s guitars are doing when combined with Stump’s whining half-snarl for nearly the track’s full duration, calls to mind the unlistenable harshness of Cold Cave’s Cherish the Light Years without any of Eisold’s agonized irony behind the keys. I’m already nostalgic for the sonic flexibility of the Madden brothers.
[0]
Brad Shoup: Nah, this is an aggro “Hall of Fame”. I’ll pass on Stump’s opaque bellow for now and interpolations of “Tom’s Diner” for the rest of time.
[2]
Hazel Robinson: On earlier Fall Out Boy stuff, there’s this filthy, self-aggrandizing enjoyment to misery. It’s the secret dark heart of emo, that the melodrama tends to be about things that make you quietly, darkly, wickedly glad — like being too afraid to actually kill yourself and the righteous anger of having been wronged. It’s not fake; the intensity of despair and fury is as real as anything but it’s the swelling-and-bursting heart of an unfettered emotion. The band have grown with the fans, though and it might not be hugs and learning and personal revelations (except the ones that grip you, sweaty and heart-racing in the early hours of the morning) and if they’re maybe happier or at least, more certain, the music now’s about being abjectly, miserably stressed. The difference in Patrick’s vocal — from a lustily enthusiastic, full-throat holler to a threatening rictus — is the indicator that everything else underlines; the promise of “Centuries” to be the opposite of amnesia is an aggressive oath, not a commitment. And a lot of the tetchy, awkward, adult grumpiness that’s all over this is precisely the desire to be remembered that way and not as a notch in a bedpost. The more Fall Out Boy turn meta, the more they struggle to get past the (loving, genuinely committed) fanbase that tells them they have never been as good as a can’t-get-much-worse, the more they know their imperial phase is being read as post-colonialism and the meaner and more desperate they are to break from that, the more urgent their urge to talk about nothing else, the more my own dark, stress-wracked little heart constricts and thuds arrhythmically to this big, honest thing they’ve become. Some desperately important metaphor about overeducated white kids and their bullshit struggling with nothing more threatening than inter-generational disappointment and the seething, petty annoyance of it all. I thought they might have gotten the anger out with the last album, in all its sarcastic, vicious glory but no, no, they are mad as hell and going to continue to take it just to stick it to someone. 4 lief.
[9]
Ashley Ellerson: Many old school FOB fans may hate this song, but they have to accept the fact that the guys are older and don’t have to play pop punk forever. Everyone’s talking about the obvious “Tom’s Diner” sample (shout out to Lolo), but I’m stuck on Clint Mansell’s “Lux Aeterna” sample that rings through the chorus. Maybe I’m biased because I believe it’s a great composition for Requiem for a Dream, but it could relate to the idea of dreams making or ending us and what we leave behind as a result. Fall Out Boy will continue to make music they’re interested in, regardless of whether or not fans enjoy it, and they know they’ll never be forgotten. Patrick Stump sings, “Some legends are told / some turn to dust or to gold,” and these guys will be gold.
[8]
Will Adams: This’ll be lucky to be remembered on Worst of 2014 lists. One point for the “Tom’s Diner” riff, if only for the stunning display of ego required to pilfer it for this garbage.
[1]
Katherine St Asaph: Suzanne Vega released an album this year. You had no idea. What makes you think this embarrassment has a better chance to last?
[4]