Fall Out Boy

American Beauty / American Psycho

Overall, American Beauty/American Psycho is another winner for Fall Out Boy—they manage to mature their sound without losing their signature attitude or feeling.

American Beauty/American Psycho is Fall Out Boy continuing to create its own musical reality—and inviting everyone else to catch up if they can.

Structurally, American Beauty/American Psycho follows the general template of its predecessor, namely towering anthems bolstered by electronic beats, calibrated perfectly for sports arenas around the world.

American Beauty/American Psycho ... bristles with nervy ambition, and if it’s not an American Idiot-style career-changer, it’s certainly one of their better releases.

The rest of AB/AP is quirkier, a record built on the detritus of the last four decades of consumer culture.

When everything connects ... FOB are a glorious nexus of Seventies glitter rock, Eighties radio pop, Nineties R&B and Aughts electro stomp. But the LP still runs the risk of being too cutesy and referential.

It's more ideation than practice, which is why the too-cluttered American Beauty/American Psycho won't be this band's American Idiot.

Fall Out Boy take the epic builds and releases of Save Rock and Roll and, against all odds, push that energy even further without collapsing under the weight of their own ambition.

There’s the usual highly strung bluster but American Beauty/American Psycho hurtles by in an appealing blur and they’ve never been more blessed with winning hooks.

Two years on from Save Rock and Roll, Fall Out Boy are getting even weirder, splicing their DNA with hip-hop samples and some of the biggest anthems they’ve ever done, but some of the mutations haven’t been pretty.