Fall Out Boy – Take This to Your Grave

Anyone remember Teen Rock?

I use this as an umbrella term for the Rock that came out around the late 90’s into the mid-00’s. It was criticized for whining, for being angsty and being derivative. You don’t have to look at two bands from different genres to realize that was bullshit. Inspired by New Found Glory as they are, their demeanor is different. It seems most of the criticism came from people who either were metalheads (In general, not people to talk about music to) or people who didn’t realize hooks were a good thing.

Time does its thing. Now that these bands aren’t in everyone’s face and no one can hate them for having teen fangirls, we can actually listen to the music. There are plenty of surprises, like realizing My Chemical Romance is more of a Glam Rock act and that Linkin Park were pretty experimental. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Fall Out Boy used to be Emo.

Fall Out Boy aren’t Emo. This isn’t an attack on either Emo or the band. The genre is fantastic and the band is responsible for ridiculously catchy songs. Their later output is too happy, too hook-heavy to be called Emo. It lacked the sensitivity, the vulnerability and the sloppy sound that Emo so earnest.

Here, though, they’re gloriously Emo. It’s easy to miss this. They don’t rely on one-liners like Texas Is the Reason or sound like American Football. Stump has yet to gain rockstar confidence, so although he’s got stadium-sized hooks he spends the records looking back at how shitty his youth his.

I’m sure that sounds whiny to most, but these people can go listen to Slayer. What the hell does ‘whiny’ mean, anyway? What band didn’t sing about their troubles? Art is one way of humans to cope with the bad stuff. Heartbreak was a constant theme from the beginning. If you approach an album filled with songs about relationships and think to yourself that it’s whiny, you suck at human psychology.

Now, this subject can lead to a lot of embarassing lyrics. Politics can also lead to embarassing lyrics, though. Just look at Rage Against the Machine. What’s important is how the band approaches these subjects. Do the lyrics explore the subject? Can they put into words feelings you’ve been unable to describe, or are they regurgitating cliches?

Maybe this is what people meant when they said ‘whiny’. Some bands’ lyrics are just a collection of random words about how bad stuff is. The key to a good, emotionally releasing song is being specific. Either that, or just have good one-liners.

Where Nu Metal failed and Emo succeeded was the lyrical department. As much as I love Nu Metal, many bands just sung about how things are bad in general. Fall Out Boy are specific. It’s the great tradition of looking at your youth, looking at all these people (or single person) you hate and finding new ways to say ‘I hate you’.

Take This to Your Grave is a very hateful album. I’m talking about Glassjaw-level of hatred here. Wentz’s lyrics don’t go off about the gender of the assailant, but the hatred overflows the record. Here are some lines:

“Stop burning bridges and drive off of them
So I can forget about you”

“Every friend we ever had in common
I will sever the tie, sever the tie with you
You can thank your lucky stars that everything I wish for will never come true”

“You want apologies
Girl, you might hold your breath
Until your breathing stops forever, forever”

“I want to hate you half as much as I hate myself”

Poetry is about finding new ways to say old feelings. Fall Out Boy never repeats the same words too much. Each line is specific to a situation. Most of the album is either about hating yourself or hating another, but there’s wit in them. The band doesn’t just repeat “I hate you”.

It’s shocking to read these lyrics. The music isn’t pure Emo and their path towards pure Pop is evident. Stump’s voice, the fast playing and the ridiculous catchiness of it makes it sound happy. “Dead on Arrival” and “Where Is Your Boy?” are so gloriously melodic you can imagine teens singing along to them at the end of a party celebrating their summer. The lyrics are so vile though. The former is one of the least hateful songs here, but Stump teasing a girl about how she’ll grow to like him has bitterness in it. The latter condescends towards both the girl and her new guy.

If it sounds like Fall Out Boy are another band who sold out and let go of their aggression, it’s not. This record did have hits and the band’s lives improved incredibly. Of course they wouldn’t be so hateful after selling so many records. Take This is hateful not because the band’s mission statement is to make hateful music – they’re not Slipknot or Korn. The album often plays like a Greatest Hits records with only “Reinventing the Wheel” letting things down. At their heart, they were always one of the best Pop bands.

The album does suffer from a repetitive sound. The band hadn’t discovered varying tempos yet and most of the songs alter slightly, but even the most deviating songs (the incredibly melodic “Saturday”) don’t do much to add new color. All these 12 songs stay firmly in Punk-Pop territory as if no other genre exists. It’s impressive they could mine this narrow genre for 11 great songs, but the effect is tiring when listened to in full.

Fall Out Boy are a brilliant band and were great since their inception. People who hated the whole ‘Teen Rock’ movement won’t enjoy a thing here. The slightly raw sound doesn’t make this any less radio-friendly. That movement contained a lot of great music, riffs and hooks and  is one of its classics.

3.5 postcards from a plane crash out of 5