by Erik van Rheenen

Fall Out Boy’s announcement for this summer’s co-headlining tour with stoner rapper extraordinaire Wiz Khalifa and college-kid favorite Hoodie Allen nearly drowned in a riptide of fan backlash, a maelstrom-of-sorts swirling with expected-if-closed-minded comments sticking the band with the obligatory “sellout” stamp and raised wavering eyebrows about FOB’s resolutely un-pop-rockish tourmate.

So here’s a lifeline: the Boys of Zummer lineup makes sense, if not from a spelling standpoint (not fixing that “Z” makes me rebel against my internal copy editor) than from a ticket-selling one. My only real problem with the tour is the co-headliner — I wish the boys of FOB hitched their star to a more technically adroit and refined rapper than Wiz Freakin’ Khalifa — but the mixed-lineup bill, especially with two artists with absolutely inescapable songs, will get butts (and, presumably, well-hidden, sneaked-in blunts) in the seats.

While the staunchest of the new-Fall-Out-Boy-sucks crowd can’t fault FOB for scheduling a high-profile, big venue tour alongside a Top 40 mainstay (I’m almost making this sound like Monumentour, Part Deux yeah?), the gripe I’ve read most often is that touring with Khalifa — as opposed to, say, Paramore or Panic! At the Disco, again — is equivalent to a betrayal of the band’s roots.

“These aren’t the same guys who played basement shows and DIYs in Chicago,” says the prototypical new-FOB-sucks fan, “They barely play anything off Take This to Your Grave in concerts anymore.”

And to that I say…you’re absolutely right. The Fall Out Boy that released American Beauty/American Psycho today is so far removed from the one that penned TTTYG. And that’s most definitely a good thing. Veering off on a quick tangent, I’m still not sure I understand fans who clasp their hands together and pray at the alter of the Patron Saint of Liars and Fakes for a second-coming of an album in the same vein of TTTYG. AbsolutePunk’s Jason Tate was right on the nose when he mentioned how unhealthy it would be for FOB to still be releasing albums with the same lyrical themes of the band’s proper debut LP.

That’s the thing about nostalgia — it evokes a certain time in one’s life. I love TTTYG as much as the next self-respecting Fall Out Boy fan, mostly due to the memories it pulls up from high school, when my good friend Alex burned me a crash-course introduction to Fall Out Boy on a CD that I wore out in a hurry. Unlike Patrick Stump’s chorus on “Dead on Arrival,” the songs I grew to like definitely stuck at first, and shouting songs like “Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today” and omnicloser “Saturday” back at the band during a rain-soaked Skate and Surf 2013 was kind of close to a religious moment for me.

But, in 2015, if I plugged in my headphones, flipped on American Beauty/American Psycho, and heard lyrics like “I hope you choke/On those words, that kiss, that bottle,” or “I want to hate you half as much as I hate myself,” I’d worry about the band’s stunted emotional growth. Pop punk is a genre where Peter Pan syndrome is debilitating, and bands that don’t mature both lyrically and sonically can get caught in a rut of writing the same damn album time and again.

“Touring with a rapper though,” interjects the prototypical new-Fall-Out-Boy-sucks fan, frantically clinging to an argument that’s slipping through his fingertips, “That’s so far out of Fall Out Boy’s wheelhouse! Not to mention their new sound. It’s sounlike vintage FOB. What happened to saving rock and roll?”

Fans who felt confused or caught off guard by the band’s foray into more electronic experimentation and hip-hop infused songwriting must not have listened very hard to any of FOB’s albums post-Cork Tree. Babyface produced and played instruments on two of Infinity on High’s blockbuster singles, including the ubiquitous and vowel-challenged “Thnks Fr th Mmrs” — and that’s the same album where the first vocals heard on opener “Thriller” are not from Stump, but Jay Z. Folie a Deux features production from Pharrell Williams and a cameo from pre-becoming-a-punchline Lil Wayne. It’s easy to trace the band’s love for hip-hop and pop songwriting through Fall Out Boy’s roots, and I’d say fans who were surprised by the acrobatic turns the band’s sound took post-hiatus almost prefer to whitewash those influences by simply ignoring them.

Fall Out Boy’s hallmarks — the same calling cards that have made themselves apparent in the band’s music since the TTTYG days — are still easily spotted on American Beauty/American Psycho. Big choruses, wordy verses, killer hooks, and Pete Wentz’s penchant for at-times histrionic lyrics all add to the killer nature of the AB/AP songbook. Maybe old FOB wouldn’t have sampled “Tom’s Diner” in the past, but they damn sure would’ve written a hook like the chorus to “Centuries.” And maybe a pre-Save Rock and Roll Fall Out Boy would’ve shied away from the Daft-Punkish vocal moments on “Favorite Record,” but definitely would’ve still written an earworm like “Favorite Record.” And is “Twin Skeletons” or “The Kids Aren’t All Right” really all that different from FOB ballads past? Nah.

I’m not calling AB/AP a perfect record. I burned out on “Centuries” from hearing the song fifty fucking times every time I flipped on ESPN, and I’m still not sure I get “Immortals.” But in 2015, this is the new Fall Out Boy record I didn’t know I wanted: progressive and bold and daring, refusing to retread old ground and trailblazing a new kind of pop-rock hybrid. Even among a few splashes of nostalgia (nothing quite as overt as the TTTYG-sampling on “Save Rock and Roll,” but the surf-groove sample of the theme to The Munsters on “Uma Thurman” and old-school punk references on “Favorite Record” hit sweet spots), this is Fall Out Boy at close to its best, challenging the notions of what it means to be a mainstream rock band in an era when mainstream rock is a loose-and-fast genre construction.

If you’re having a tough time reconciling the Fall Out Boy you grew up with to the Fall Out Boy you’re hearing on the radio now, lose the rose-tinted glasses (those definitely aren’t safe to wear driving, anyways) and you’ll see modern Fall Out Boy as the band is really painted: in vibrant and dazzling new shades of the same colors we’ve grown to love.

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