Jul 9

Jul 9 Show Review, Photos: Fall Out Boy Thrill Mountain View With Sold Out "So Much For Stardust" Tour

Fall Out Boy
w/ Bring Me The Horizon, Royal & The Serpent, Daisy Grenade
Shoreline Amphitheatre
Mountain View, CA
July 5th, 2023

Review/Photos by Jaime Schultz

On Wednesday night in Mountain View, Chicago rock act Fall Out Boy brought one of the year’s most highly anticipated shows to a sold-out Bay Area crowd. The four-piece band – comprised of vocalist/guitarist Patrick Stump, bassist Pete Wentz, guitarist Joe Trohman, and drummer Andy Hurley – are currently on the road in support of their phenomenal new record, So Much (For) Stardust, and they built a setlist with diehard fans in mind.

The show was opened by Daisy Grenade, an energetic rock duo out of Brooklyn fronted by musicians Dani Nigro and Keaton Whittaker. Having cut their teeth in the theater (the duo originally met while working on a production of the American Idiot musical before COVID shut it down), they are no strangers in the art of entertaining a crowd, and they proved to be an excellent start to the evening’s festivities. Equal parts garage rock, bubblegum pop, and pop-punk, the band’s half-hour set got the energy off to a great start.

Royal and the Serpent, the brainchild of singer-songwriter Ryan Santiago, followed with a set that started off mellow before building up into an explosion of energy. With several EPs and a number of singles under her belt, Santiago has been making quite the name for herself, working with artists like Demi Lovato, Stand Atlantic, Louis The Child, and Gayle in just a few short years. The crowd was familiar with Royal and the Serpent, and the familiarity only further elevated the intensity reverberating throughout the amphitheater.

Other than Fall Out Boy, the most anticipated act of the night was easily Bring Me The Horizon. On the surface, this would seem like an odd pairing for a tour; nearly fifteen years ago, the Sheffield-based five-piece was performing on that very same stage to close out the 2008 Vans Warped Tour. They were strictly a deathcore band, their biggest album at the time being Suicide Season, a chaotic and breakdown-infused record where you could hear vocalist Oli Sykes practically shredding his vocal cords as he screamed: “I’ve got a secret/It’s on the tip of my tongue/It’s on the back of my lungs”. The last several years have been outstanding for Bring Me The Horizon; they’ve ingratiated themselves amongst the alternative rock community, seamlessly blending and hopping between metal, rock, and even pop. While they didn’t dive that far back into their discography (the oldest songs played came from their exemplary Sempiternal album, “Shadow Moses” and set closer “Throne), they didn’t need to. The last several records from Bring Me The Horizon have found them writing some of the best material of their careers, and the energy was through the roof the second vocalist Oli Sykes became visible on stage. With eleven songs, Bring Me The Horizon made their statement and truly showcased how far they’ve come since standing on that very same stage years prior.

A red curtain was hung as the backdrop to the stage, as “The Pink Seashell”, a spoken track interlude featuring actor Ethan Hawke, played over the PA system as the lights when down. That track comes during the halfway point of So Much (For) Stardust, and it sets an epic tone when opening the show. Amidst a flurry of fireworks, pyrotechnics, and immaculate production, Fall Out Boy opened with “Love From The Other Side”, the blistering first track on the new album, before diving straight into one of the best-constructed setlists of their career.

If you came into this show hoping to hear some new songs and old favorites, there is no way you could walk away disappointed. Classics like “Sugar We’re Goin Down” (From Under The Cork Tree), “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race” (Infinity On High), and “The Phoenix” (Save Rock and Roll) were all present. In a stunning move, the Chicago four-piece played through not one, but five songs from their fan-favorite debut album Take This To Your Grave. The song “Saturday” has concluded their shows for decades and “Grand Theft Autumn/Take This To Your Grave” is a set staple at this point, but the inclusion of “Chicago Is So Two Years Ago”, “Calm Before The Storm”, and the surprise song of the night “The Patron Saint of Liars and Fakes” came as a great shock to many in attendance (myself included). Surprisingly, the band played through a run of songs from Folie a Deux, their fourth record that wasn’t warmly received upon release but has since developed a massive following in the last decade. “Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet” and “Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes” were performed with such exhilaration and intensity that it would be truly impossible to have walked away from this show unsatisfied.

Fall Out Boy is in the business of writing anthems, whether they know it or not. They closed their show with three of their biggest: “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up) from Save Rock and Roll, “Thnks fr the Mmrs” (Infinity On High) and “Centuries” (American Beauty/American Psycho) before ending with “Saturday”. Fall Out Boy can’t get back here soon enough; this is one of the year’s very best shows and one that is not to be missed.

Fall Out Boy Set List
Love From The Other Side
The Phoenix
Sugar, We’re Goin Down
Uma Thurman
A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More “Touch Me”
Chicago Is So Two Years Ago
Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy
Calm Before The Storm
This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race
Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes
Heaven, Iowa
“The Take Over, The Breaks Over”
Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet
Fake Out
Alison (Elvis Costello cover)
What A Catch, Donnie (snippet, Patrick playing solo on piano)
Don’t Stop Believin’ (Journey cover)
The Last of the Real Ones
Save Rock and Roll
Baby Annihilation
Crazy Train (Ozzy Osbourne cover)
Dance, Dance
Hold Me Like A Grudge
The Patron Saint of Liars and Fakes
My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up)
Thnks fr the Mmrs
Saturday