With their eighth studio album, 2023's ebullient
So Much (For) Stardust
,
Fall Out Boy
fully re-embrace the emo and punk-pop dynamism of their classic work. It's a soaring style they've been threatening to unleash ever since returning to regular activity following their hiatus after 2008's
Folie a Deux
. Although their subsequent follow-ups like
Save Rock and Roll
American Beauty/American Psycho
, and
Mania
all topped the Billboard 200, the albums found the band experimenting, throwing their songs into a production blender of contemporary pop, hip-hop, and EDM sounds. Without ever sounding too much like a throwback,
has a homecoming feeling, as if
are getting back to their rock roots. It's a vibe that's underlined by the presence of producer
Neal Avron
, with whom they recorded the core of their most beloved albums, including 2005's
From Under the Cork Tree
. From the start, there's a balance of measured craftsmanship (they purportedly took their time in the studio) and big melodic hooks, all effusively delivered by singer
Patrick Stump
. It's an infectious combination the band perfect on the opening "Love from the Other Side," a song ostensibly about dealing with (and perhaps being the cause of) a bad breakup. That said, it could just as easily work as a metaphor for the group's attempts at transforming their sound coming off the emo highs of the early 2000s. Early in the song,
Stump
admits, "We were a hammer to the statue of David." There's a bittersweet nostalgia implied by the song, as if the band are looking back on their career and taking stock of where they (and by proxy their fans) find themselves in a post-emo, post-pandemic world. They return to that sentiment on "I Am My Own Muse," where
, bellowing against a symphonic string bombast and guitarist
Joe Trohman
's fiery riffs, sings, "Smash all the guitars 'til we see all the stars/Oh, we've got to throw this year away like a bad luck charm." This kind of bold rock affection drives much of the album, as on the '80s AOR of "Heartbreak Feels So Good," the
Queen
-meets-
Michael Jackson
post-punk stomp of "Hold Me Like a Grudge," and the dreamy new wave romanticism of "Fake Out." Adding to the emotional push of the album are several unabashed musical and pop-cultural references, including the
Earth, Wind & Fire
intimations of "What a Time to Be Alive," the
Don Henley
"Boys of Summer" flourishes at the center of "The Kintsugi Kid (Ten Years)," and even a snippet of
Ethan Hawke
's soliloquy about the meaning of life from Reality Bites in which his character offers up the adage "It's all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy in a series of near escapes." Whether that's how
feel about their career or not,
is a gloriously welcome return to form. ~ Matt Collar