Fall Out Boy

M A N I A

Impossible to peg down or box in, ‘M A N I A’ sounds like Fall Out Boy enjoying being Fall Out Boy, and taking full advantage of all the freedom that offers.

All in all, M A N I A is a welcome expansion of Fall Out Boy’s arsenal of songs about the vicissitudes of life and love.

Not every grand plan pays off – the Latin-pop of Hold Me Tight Or Don't sounds like an emo band at karaoke – but considering Fall Out Boy scrapped much of the record late last year, for the most part Mania feels worth the wait.

From chiming tropical jam ‘Hold Me Tight Or Don’t’ to the batshit but brilliant EDM of ‘Young And Menace’, the quartet have thrown everything they’ve done previously out of the window.

The album is less a reboot than a re-affirmation of their ability to fuse over-the-top oversharing and Queen-ly operatic stomp with an elastic vision of pop.

Mania doesn’t have enough big tunes ... to really pull it off, but the band deserve a lot of credit for such continual reinvention.

Instead of making Fall Out Boy seem fresh, these electronic inflections wind up hinting at the group's age, as this frenetic music never seems to come as easily as the familiar amped-up blue-eyed soul and heady punk-pop. That transparent sense of labor does indeed make M A N I A seem manic, with Fall Out Boy not so much chasing trends as demonstrating that they know something is happening, they just don't know what it is.

Since around 2007’s Infinity On High, the key to enjoying Fall Out Boy has been letting go of their pop-punk past and embracing the pop band that always hid in plain sight. That was a chore on American Beauty/American Psycho, but less so on Mania. As endorsements go, that’s pretty qualified.

To step out musically is to drop out commercially and though frequently redundant, M A N I A remains a fun listen.

Their latest, Mania, feels like a Fall Out Boy album in name only, equidistant to their roots as New Order was to Joy Division.