Fall Out Boy – Infinity On High Review

Fall Out Boy, I admit, certainly seems an odd choice to be reviewed in a section about darker music, but as a band who defies conventions and genres, it’s not very surprising. Fall Out Boy has been classified as emo, pop, punk, rock, and everything in-between, but they really come off as a band who makes whatever music floats their particular boat of the moment. Instead of sticking to a genre, they experiment here and there, and by and large produce music that’s interesting and fresh, and they continue to do so with Infinity On High.

Two things carry Infinity On High, and to a lesser extent Fall Out Boy itself. The first is the lyric writing of Peter Wentz (the band’s frontman), which is consistently interesting. Wentz understands the concept of simple things like “allegory” and “metaphor”, and his writing shows it off very well. The second is the vocals of Patrick Stump, who is a strong, versatile singer with a surprisingly broad range. Combine these with the general versatility of the band and you end up with songs that are infectious and enjoyable beyond genre appreciation. Tracks like “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race” (which is itself enjoyable in that ‘I hate the people that go to our shows’ sort of way), “Thnks fr th Mmrs”, and “The Take Over, The Breaks Over” take full advantage of the talents of the band, and the results are appropriately impressive.

By and large, the only distinctly notable complaint is that, for the complaining “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race” does, more than a few of the songs on Infinity On High are semi-conventional “emo” songs, IE “boy, I sure do suck a lot” songs. “The Carpal Tunnel of Love”, while the title is absolutely amusing, serves as a perfect example (though you could really pick almost any song from the album as an example): it’s a bouncy, upbeat toned song (with a little bit of screaming vocalization for the heck of it) about a crappy relationship. For music that’s generally up-tempo, the lyrics are more often depressing than not, and while this makes for an interesting contrast, it gets repetitive after a while. Even with that, though, you’ll be hard-pressed to find an album that’s as catchy and enjoyable as Infinity On High. It’s a solid, interesting genre-crossing piece of high quality musical goodness, mainstream success or no.

Website: Fall Out Boy