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Whether intentional or not, there's a certain glee to FOB's pop absurdity because their cheerfully careless genre-bending has no reverence: fitting all these sounds and jokes into a pop song is all a game and it's one listeners can share, whether they're playing spot-the-allusion or just succumbing to the sugary hooks clustered within one track.
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The band have responded with their most stylistically hatstand-but-indisputably-best songs yet.
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In Fall Out Boy's world, tongue-in-cheek always trumps heart-on-sleeve. That's certainly the case on Folie à Deux, their most exuberantly cheeky release yet.
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Folie follows the precedent of 2007's "Infinity On High," which expanded Fall Out Boy's sonic palette (synthesizers, sequenced drums, strings, etc.). This one just goes further, with more layers and cameos from Elvis Costello, Debbie Harry, Lil Wayne, and others.
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If the band could bring themselves to record with anything resembling subtlety, they might win over some skeptics. But they also might end up hanging with Lightspeed Champion. I suspect they'll take the trade-off.
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Passionate, splashy, and ambitious, Folie isn't flawless by any stretch, but it's no folly either.
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While Folie A Deux at times feels like the band are showing off the contents of their Rolodex, the album's standouts are so good that they will undoubtedly become standards for the band's live shows for years to come.
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It's simply another sturdy album that plays up what Fall Out Boy does best: rocking the arena with barely a second to catch your breath.
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This is the brightest, breeziest, giddiest record Fall Out Boy have ever made.
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But for all the steps forward, Folie a Deux also seems to contain a microchip for its own destruction.
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Folie A Deux is entertaining in moderate doses, like its predecessor "Infinity On High", where the band gleefully abandoned any last pretence to edginess.
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And while this all may sound suspiciously over-indulgent, the fact is these self-styled 'soft-core' rockers are fulfilling their own prophesy.
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This is a more sophisticated record that manages to keep intact the brash sensibility that helped attract all those fans in the first place.
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Low-tune for a pop band, low-momentum for a rock band, they stand a chance of evoking bad Elvis Costello when they take you by surprise or emote on in the background.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 117 out of 140
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Mixed: 9 out of 140
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Negative: 14 out of 140
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Mar 19, 2012
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Jun 30, 2013
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Dec 26, 2015