"I always keep a stimulant handy in case I see a snake - which I also keep handy" - W. C. ...
"I always keep a stimulant handy in case I see a snake - which I also keep handy" - W. C. Fields
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One day a colleague of mine had a new CD delivered to the office by a band I had never heard of. I wouldn’t have paid it much attention except that the song titles on the album were some of the longest and funniest I had seen since Less Than Jake released “All My Best Friends Are Metalheads”. But not knowing who the band was, I merely chuckled and gave the CD back to him, vaguely impressed that they had named themselves after a minor character from “The Simpsons”.
A short while after, I heard a very catchy song on the music channels and, again not knowing who the band was, looked them up on Amazon. It wasn’t until I saw the titles on the album that I realised the bands were one and the same and armed with the knowledge that at least one track was very good and an assurance from my colleague that the rest were just as good, I decided to give the album a try.
The title of “Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued” always makes me wonder what the original title might have been, although the song soon leaves you not worrying. This is a decent opener, with a driving rock-pop riff with a heavier bass line than you would expect from a song of this type and a catchy chorus. This song makes me feel that if Rooster were the next step up from Busted, then Fall Out Boy are the natural next link in that chain.
There’s a nice rock guitar riff opening “Of All the Gin Joints in All the World” before the song goes into the same territory of the previous track. It’s another faced paced rock-pop song with a driving riff that blasts past and a chorus that stands out enough to sing along to, which would make Fall Out Boy a decent stadium rock band.
There’s a funky bass line to open “Dance Dance” and the song seems like a slightly more low key track, although once the bridge
and chorus kick in, you discover that the opposite is true. Once more, this is an up tempo rock-pop track with a catchy chorus, much like the earlier tracks.
“Sugar We’re Goin’ Down” is the song that first attracted me to Fall Out Boy. The opening riff is slightly darker in tone, slower in tempo and heavier in sound than the earlier tracks, making this more of a straight rock song. There’s another catchy hook in the chorus and despite a rhythm section that wouldn’t sound too out of place on a System of a Down track, this is in substance a pretty decent stadium rock song.
Borrowing a title from “Dirty Dancing” might make you believe that Fall Out Boy are having a soft moment, but the minute the song starts, you know that’s not the case. “Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner” is possibly the fastest paced song on the album so far, although that’s the only difference, as it sticks very much to the Fall Out Boy formula of driving guitars leading a stadium rock-pop sound and a catchy chorus.
“I’ve Got a Dark Alley and a Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth (Summer Song)” is one that should never make it as a single, as you’d never fit the title on the label of a 7” vinyl record. Like “Dance Dance”, the opening seems to be a little more low key, but the chorus is another up tempo catchy rock-pop one. The tempo is perhaps a little slower than usual, but this is clearly a Fall Out Boy song from the other elements.
Fortunately, “7 Minutes in Heaven (Atavan Halen)” isn’t actually 7 minutes long, as that would be overdoing it. It’s at this point at the album that I really feel like I’ve had enough, as Fall Out Boy really only seem to have the one track and repeat it with minor variations and hope it will last for an album. There’s perhaps a slightly clearer sound to this one, with there seeming to be a little less “fuzz” in the mix, but the only really interesting thing about it is that the guitar solo sounds vaguely like a heavier and faster version of the intro to Mr Big’s “Green Tinted Sixties Mind”.
There’s another low key intro to “Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year”, which like most of the tracks that have started this way lasts a single verse, before expanding into Fall Out Boy’s standard rock-pop sound. The tempo does seem to be a little slower than usual and there’s one word towards the end where they try an industrial metal style vocal, but apart from that the only thing this track has to set it apart is that “I swear I’ll burn the city down to show you the light”, which is one of the few occasions on the album where the lyric managed to outshine the title of the song.
The guitar intro to “Champagne for my Real Friends Real Pain for my Sham Friends” has that clearer sound from the earlier tracks and actually sounds a little like Ash or Muse, with a slight indie tinge to their usual rock-pop sound. Aside from this, all the other Fall Out Boy elements are present, with the catchy chorus and the driving riffs once more to the fore.
There’s a modern blues tinge to the guitar riff on “I Slept With Someone in Fall Out Boy and all I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me” that reminds me slightly of Aerosmith. This sits at odds with the industrial metal style vocal over some parts of the song and it does seem like a few bits thrown together more than it does a proper track.
The intro to “A Little Less Sixteen Candles a Little More ‘Touch Me’” suggests that the previous track was a single aberration, as all the usual Fall Out Boy elements are back and you get a pop-rock track with the catchy chorus. It’s perhaps slightly down tempo from their usual tracks, but the driving bass is still there to help it along.
There’s a stripped down guitar and vocal intro to “Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying “(Do Your Part to Save the Scene and Stop Going)” that reminds me of a Terrorvision track, although when the music kicks in, it’s all Fall Out Boy. This is possibly the most down tempo track on the album, although in Fall Out Boy terms that makes it mid-tempo rather than a ballad. It’s a simpler song musically than most of their others, particularly over the verses, and has a strange almost spoken word section in a couple of parts. The song does retain the catchy chorus, but it’s not one of their better efforts.
The final track, “XO” ensures that the album ends as it has mostly gone before. This is another up-tempo driving rock-pop song with a catchy chorus that doesn’t obviously distinguish itself from the rest of the album.
On “From Under the Cork Tree”, Fall Out Boy have certainly found a sound that works for them. The only problem is that they’ve only found the one sound and they’ve decided to use it over and over again with very little variation until it starts getting boring. When I first heard “Sugar, We’re Going Down”, I thought it sounded like a great song and it still does if you get to hear it in isolation. The problem is that if you repeat the same song over and over thirteen times in 50 minutes, it’s going to get at best boring and at worst really very annoying.
This is effectively what Fall Out Boy have done with “From Under the Cork Tree” and, from what I’ve heard of the early singles from “Infinity on High”, are continuing to do. Where Status Quo made a whole career out of variations on just three chords, it appears that Fall Out Boy plan to make one from a variation on a single song.
Fall Out Boy are at the head of what is now known as “emo”, although as far as I can tell from this album, that’s simply a rock-pop sound with a catchy chorus that would have been called stadium rock two decades ago. Fall Out Boy are likely to become the emo equivalent of Bon Jovi and if Fall Out Boy lightened up their rhythm section and had a few harmonies in the chorus, they could end up sounding the same as well.
Thanks to there being a follow up album available, the price of “From Under the Cork Tree” is now a reasonable £6.98 from Amazon or £6.99 from Play and could well be on offer in the offline record stores when they have a sale. Second hand copies are on eBay from just under £1 and for an album with effectively only one song, that’s about right. If you like the Fall Out Boy sound from the single, this is the perfect album for you, as it’s pretty much all the same sound, but if you only liked it a little, I’d suggest you download what you like and ignore the rest, as it will get very boring very quickly. This really isn’t an album worth investing time and money in, as once you’ve heard one song, you’ve pretty much heard them all.
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Aug 5th, 2007
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