Fall Out Boy - So Much (for) Stardust
Fall Out Boy
So Much (for) Stardust
Release Date: March 24th, 2023
Label: Fueled By Ramen/Elektra/DCD2
Review by Jared Stossel
On the seventh track of Fall Out Boy’s eighth studio album, Patrick Stump soulfully laments “We’ve got to throw this year away, we’ve got to throw this year away like, a bad luck charm”. It took me well over a year to review this album, mainly because I was cast into such a well of despair when my wife fought cancer last year and dealt with an unbearable number of complications. Weirdly, the cancer was the least stressful part of the situation - but enough about us. The point of my bringing this anecdote up is that this line nearly became our anthem for 2023. Even amidst a shitty year, we found solace in Fall Out Boy’s So Much (for) Stardust, one of the best collections of songs that the four-piece Chicago act have written in their two-decade career, and the one that they’ve been meant to write all along.
Fall Out Boy burst onto the pop-punk scene with critically acclaimed albums like Take This To Your Grave, From Under The Cork Tree, and Infinity On High. Massive success, tabloid covers, and worldwide arena tours accompanied the gold and platinum records, star-studded music videos, and fame. Their fourth album, Folie a Deux, found them breaking away from the traditional four-chord pop-punk mold, working to embrace other genres and stylings so that they felt like they didn’t hate themselves playing the same songs they night after night. While it’s now a fan favorite, people hated the record upon release. It nearly destroyed the band, and contributed to a several-year hiatus before they returned in 2013 with Save Rock and Roll. I believe that we would have eventually gotten a record like So Much (for) Stardust down the line, even with the harsh criticism in the early aughts of Folie, but their 2023 effort feels like a natural progression. While it does return to their “pop-rock” roots, Stardust finds the band experimenting with various genres in successful ways, channeling sounds that range from funk, soul, and disco. Every song works.
The album’s opener - and one of its strongest tracks - is “Love From The Other Side”, beginning with a near-operatic orchestra before crescendoing in something that feels like a cross between an uptempo Hans Zimmer score and a rock concert. The band - Stump, drummer Andy Hurley, guitarist Joe Trohman, and bassist Pete Wentz - are firing on all cylinders, in a way I haven’t heard them in years. Yes, there are some exceptional tracks on their post-hiatus albums like American Beauty/American Psycho and M A N I A, but there were moments on each of those which felt disjointed. This time, they’re completely in sync, and their work with longtime producer Neal Avron has produced some of their best results.
Genres are not mined for inspiration, but rather alluded to, such as on the bubbly, swing-heavy “So Good Right Now” and the Earth, Wind and Fire-evoking “What A Time To Be Alive” (and only Wentz can continue to deliver emo poetry amongst the likes of “Everything is lit except my serotonin.”) The spirit of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” is invoked on the symphonic “I Am My Own Muse”, which is preceded by a sound clip of dialogue spoken by actor Ethan Hawke from Reality Bites. It is an emotional speech about the meaning of life, about our need to create our own verses. It’s perfectly placed before “Muse”, lending to the epic nature of the album.
For the first time in years, Wentz delivers a spoken-word poem titled “Baby Annihilation”, before leading into “The Kintsugi Kid (Ten Years)”, a track which gets its name from the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold-infused lacquer. There’s something poetic about this: Fall Out Boy were once in a state of near-disrepair, and they have since the cracked vase that was poised to crumble after Folie a Deux and fill the fault lines with gold, silver, and platinum.
Some of the best choruses make up Stardust, with singles like “Heartbreak Feels So Good” and “Hold Me Like A Grudge” finding the band taking the pop sensibilities they’ve showcased on an album like M A N I A and taking it even a step further. It feels much more like a band on Stardust, and it’s extremely refreshing. “Fake Out” and “Flu Game” feel like ethereal pop dreams being cranked through the Fall Out Boy filter, while “Heaven, Iowa” finds Stump delivering one of his best vocal runs as he screams the line “scar-crossed lovers” into the ether.
All roads lead to the eponymous concluding track, a song that feels like an encapsulation of everything the band have been working to make the past two decades. Stump’s soulful punk vocal stylings and piano work mesh seamlessly with Wentz’ lyricism, Trohman’s guitar riffs and Hurley’s percussive nature, leading into a brilliant reprise of “Love From The Other Side” that ties the album together. So Much (for) Stardust may very well be Fall Out Boy’s most ambitious record to date, and surely one of their best. Even in moments when you feel that life is a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes, they’ve managed to sit back and - beautifully - ride their own melt.
