Champions of earnest riffs and long song titles, Fall Out Boy broke into the mainstream in the 00s MySpace era which yielded so many other big American pop-punk successes: Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco. Over the past 20 years there have been flickers of R&B, electronica and glam rock in the Chicago band’s evolving catalogue, but their new album So Much (for) Stardust smoothly splits the difference, the perfect opportunity to service current appetites for “elder emo” nostalgia.
The big drama of tonight’s opener, Love From the Other Side, is somewhat thwarted by a pause for medical attention in the front row. But once things get under way, it becomes clear how readily Fall Out Boy have understood their assignment. It’s pretty rare for a two-hour rock show not to have obvious uniting highs (This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race comes closest to a mass arena freak-out), but by mixing hits with rarities from across their eight-album career, the band manage to keep everyone happy: few people in the intergenerational crowd are ever more than two or three tracks away from an encounter with their favourite era, maintaining a steady buzz of anticipation and reward that lights up in alternating pockets of screams. The over-30s perhaps fare best: “That was an old one; this is another,” smirks Pete Wentz after Chicago Is So Two Years Ago, introducing a hearty singalong of 2003 emo staple Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy, which somehow transcends age.
Over the years, plenty has been written about Wentz as Fall Out Boy’s bassist, lyricist and charisma machine. He is, after all, the member who wields the Kiss-worthy flamethrower bass, climbs inside the stage’s giant animatronic dog head and pulls off a nifty trick that sees him disappear behind a curtain and immediately reappear in the rafters. But without Patrick Stump, their shy, soulful lead singer, Fall Out Boy would be lacking their most enduring weapon. Whether scat-strutting through the wedding-disco funk of Hold Me Like a Grudge, doing his best Broadway holler on A Weekend at Pete Rose’s (Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet) or nailing the transition between spoken-word and falsetto on Dance, Dance, Stump’s vocals ring loud as a bell. He has the kind of versatility that turns a decent rock band into one with its own distinct character and style. In learning how to subvert the rules of rock without forsaking their core essence, Fall Out Boy are unlikely to be short of new friends – or genre experiments – any time soon.
• At the AO Arena, Manchester, tonight, then touring
