Fall Out Boy's 'I Dont Care' is Gen Z's 'Pour Some Sugar on Me'

I've spent a lot of extra-curricular time with Pete Wentz lately, so it's always a good day when my favorite arena-emo fameballs get it together to actually make new music. "I Don't Care," the debut single off Fall Out Boy's  "Folie a Deux" (due out on election day, Nov. 4, but please don't be distracted, kids), falls somewhere in between their best moments like "Sugar, We're Going Down" and flatter notes such as their "Beat It" cover with, erm, John Mayer. "I Don't Care" strays from the hyper-glossy R&B kick of "Infinity on High" and into something approximating scuzzy classic rock, or as scuzzy as you can get with Island/Def Jam's quarterly outlook dependent on your radio spins.

One thing that you easily forget about Fall Out Boy is that, outside of Wentz, everybody in the band is a total ripper. Heck, even the perpetual Other Guy, guitarist Joe Trohman, had an album's worth of metal demos that impressed Liars, of all people. That instrumental swagger is immediately evident from the introductory T.Rex-meets-"Personal Jesus" guitar riff that's the catchiest thing about the song, and it's a welcome move when the song doesn't need Babyface's money pit to sound immediately distinctive on the radio.

There's all the typical self-reflexive lyrical silliness about guitars screaming like fascists and Wentz being a "heat wave in your pants" (wow, they really do aspire to being the Twitter generation's Def Leppard) and a chorus demanding, "I don't care what you think as long as it's about me." I'll allow FOB one album about the perils of tabloid-land, but I can't give them two. The obligatory stomper chorus is a bit of a non-starter too, even if it's cool to hear Patrick Stump exploring the Simone-ish bottom end of his white-dude soul warble.

Ah, but then there's that bridge when they let Stump off his leash and he ad libs some goshdarn actual melisma. That's the missing ingredient this band has taken three albums to find, and why they get to host MTV shows as side projects instead of the pack of aspirant jokers jacking their hype-fatigued M.O. There's a super cheeky wanker guitar solo to close the song out, which I'm always OK with from this band because they know how to mix it right, and it underscores why they earn the privilege of having text-message song titles and Jay-Z skits on their records. They can play circles around any other platinum-selling rock band these days, and they generally use those powers for good.

-- August Brown 

Photo courtesy of falloutboyrock.com