Folie A Deux

"Nobody wants to hear you sing about tragedy". So goes "Disloyal Order Of Water Buffaloes", the first song from Fall Out Boy's latest album. Dontcha just love irony? Going on general opinion, FOB aren't the most popular band around at the minute, unless you're a 12-18 year old girl with a rainbow coloured range of skinny jeans, ears with more holes than Swiss cheese and a hairspray addiction that could be the reason for global warming. But it appears that there's an actual army (rivalling the MCRmy) of these girls buying FOB albums, explaining why they've become so popular in the last 3/4 years.

"Folie A Deux" means in English "a madness shared by two". Some of you may be thinking, "why could they just have kept their 'madness' to themselves?" But then who would we have clogging up various MTV channels, and who would the hardcore metalheads/hipsters hate for the next two or three years?

FOB have definitely become a guilty pleasure for people with taste. They're undeniably catchy but so's chlamidya. There's something about Pete Wentz too, he was meant to be the freaky, geeky outsider who listened to Morrissey. Yet now he's a multi-millionaire, emo pin up, record label boss and he's getting married to Ashlee Simpson. Methinks something doesn't add up here.

Anyways back to the album. All I can really say is average. It's got the usual pop-rock anthemics, trampling over the grave of punk, though where as the last album had more of a hip-hop influence on it, "Folie A Deux" aimed straight for the pop charts. But this is where it fails. It's a mess of bad lyrics, overthought musical ideas and an oveload of guest stars (Brendon Urie, Pharell, Debbie Harry, whatshisface from Gym Class Heroes, even Elvis bloody Costello). I don't even want to reference any individual songs since they're all one big mess of powerchords and utterly bad titles ("Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet"? What in the name of Joe Strummer is that?). Only the first 3 or 4 songs hold my attention the whole way through, and even they're pretty blah really.

I must admit I'm a fan of FOB. Not in the "OMG I luv dem!!11one1 fob rawkk, peet wents if fit" way (those kind of people should be rounded up and locked in an underground bunker), but I appreciate that they know a good pop tune/melody when it hits their lugholes. Saying that, their apparent "gift" has deserted them this time around, with a complete lack of hits here. The last two albums had, and I may get some stick for this, some solid gold pop/rock/emo classics in the shape of "Dance, Dance" and "This Ain't A Scene..." whereas now all we have is "I Don't Care", which a lobotmised sloth could have written. At least there'll be a good few years before the next album.

5/10