13. "Folie à Deux" by Fall Out Boy

It's a backhanded compliment at best to start a favourable review by saying the new album is better than previous ones, but I couldn't help but compare Folie à Deux to Fall Out Boy's Infinity On High and their earlier work, and the new album lacked the things that I wasn't crazy about on the previous albums while showing more refined skills (as wanky as that sounds). Some artists hit the jackpot on their first try, but it's almost more enjoyable to see people work hard and get better - whether they reach perfection is besides the point.

Somehow Folie à Deux strikes me as more consistent. Patrick Vaughn Stump's eclectic influences are still to be heard, but the influences are more carefully chosen and integrated better. (I wish I could remember the 80s song Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet reminds me of, but it's infinitely better than the tiki-tiki style of The (After) Life Of The Party.) The album solves the eternal problem of having a consistent "sound" while not making carbon copies of past years' Billboard material. She's My Winona kind of blends into "generic American pop anthem" with excessive doo-wopping and one unfortunate falsetto whoop at the very end, but most of the songs on the album are both cohesive and individualistic enough.

I think Stump does a fine, fine job on the vocals for this album. It seems he "discovered" his full, gorgeous voice before Infinity On High, but on Folie à Deux he sounds simultaneously much more skilled and natural. He uses his higher-to-mid register nicely without artificially pushing too low. (I think his low register works fantastically, but there's a reason Barry White is one of a kind and should not be imitated.) He does an admirable job with dynamics and his voice is versatile. The parts he really belts out sound much more impressive when it's used as an effect, a climax, rather than as a constant. There are a lot of people with pretty voices in the world, but it's the brain and heart behind the vocal chords that makes the difference, and either Stump is a very clever vocalist or has a gut that magically hits gold most of the time.

The band themselves have emphasized the lyrics' importance on Folie à Deux, but a)I'm not a "lyrics person" in general and b)it's very difficult not to get bogged down by the PR nightmare(s) when listening to the lyrics. Every time the phrases "hospital", "camera" or "nervous wreck" are mentioned or references to drugs are made, it's difficult not to connect the stories of the songs to the tragedy of being male, middle-class and white (to quote Ben Folds) and the paradox of glorifying misery. With the line "No one wants to hear you sing about tragedy" the irony gets almost too much to bear because let's face it, the only thing worse than unhappy songs are happy songs. It is a pity and a crime to reduce a band into a nervous breakdown, but there's no denying part of the fame of the band is based on the same ugly fascination that attracts people to reality TV and car crashes. I can imagine this being stifling on the band as well as the listener: self-irony is a slippery road and it's difficult to write honest lyrics when one knows three million pairs of ears will be pressed to stereos in hopes of catching one out being a hypocrite or, goodness forbid, saying something earnest.

However, if one tries be less of a product of the endless cynicism and nihilism of the emo generation and more like a person who dares to be earnest now and then, there are lines that I for one can already see myself crooning along to without a hint of self-irony. "You can only blame your problems on the world for so long/Before it all becomes the same old song" can be a truism, or it can be a true revelation. To paraphrase Justin Timberlake, claims like "I will never believe in anything again" may be a tiny bit silly, but boy, it's a hell of a statement. On the first listen I found myself chanting along to slogan choruses like the above of "Detox/Just to retox". "Doc, there's a hole where something was" would make any haiku master proud.

Above all and in conclusion to the nit-picking, my gut and my hips like the album. I already mentioned singing along on the first listen, and my hips are twitching even as I sit writing this. I listened to the album on the bus, and spent all my shopping time humming What A Catch, Donnie to myself - and it's possibly my least favourite song on the album!

The album makes me want to be an American teenager, and that, for the record, is a straight-forward compliment. I'm a very utilitarian listener, and I can already see which songs I'll use as a pick-me-up (Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes) or to strut around in my room like the dork I am (I Don't Care). There's the achingly beautiful (emphasis on the aching) chorus of W.A.M.S. that always catches me by surprise because it seems so incongruous from the rest of the song. There's the ominous build-up in Headfirst Slide's B-part (?bridge - there's a reason my reviews usually consist of "cool" or "not so cool"), and the endless anthem-like choruses that will earworm you whether you want it or not.

Time will show which songs I'll start skipping (probably the Robbie Williams-esque 20 Dollar Nose Bleed), but right now Folie à Deux works as a whole - lifting (although not necessarily up-lifting) choruses, delicious layering and surprises like beat poetry (bad pun fully intended) at the end of 20 Dollar Nose Bleed make up for the occasional less-than-fascinating verse. A part of me misses the fury of breakneck-tempo songs from Fall Out Boy's earlier albums, but I consider the versatility and sheer momentary grandness a fair enough trade-off.

My favourites off the album are Headfirst Slide and W.A.M.S., I think, although these things tend to change on an hourly basis for me.