To call Fall Out Boy an emerging band would be to imply they have some kinks to work out. But it seems the band, now six-years-old, has finally found what works for them. Their new album, "From Under the Cork Tree," was their first release under a major record label and was met with critical acclaim.
Despite the current success, guitarist and lead singer Patrick Stump said the public may have higher aspirations for the band than they do themselves.
"We're just doing our own thing," he said. "I think a lot of people have all sorts of crazy expectations for us. We don't have any expectations for ourselves, so it really doesn't matter."
However, the band does expect one thing from themselves. At the beginning of every show they proclaim that the Fall Out Boy concert they are about to play will be their best. This is a hefty vow, yet they make good on it.
The band has won many of their new fans on the strength of their hit single "Sugar, We're Going Down," which won them an MTV2 Award at the MTV Video Music Awards. Despite these awards, Stump insists that what they have achieved is not exactly fame.
"It's weird, because it's not a lot like fame." he said. "I know there are people that have a poster of my band on their wall, but it's not really like that at the same time. I'm in the same exact situation that I was when we started my junior year of high school. On the weekends we would tour in a van and now we're touring on a big nifty bus. You still wake up and you live in this little bubble where you don't talk to your family and you are cut off from the rest of the world," Stump said.
Touring conditions aside, big changes have happened to Fall Out Boy in their transition from the independent label Fueled by Ramen to Island Records.
"Fueled By Ramen is in a position to release really good demos, and literally half of [last album "Take This To Your Grave"] was recorded as demos. In a major label setting they have certain standards you have to follow ... We had always half-assedly recorded a couple songs and then hang out for a while and record a couple more songs. So this one was a real album that, from start to finish, we wrote and recorded. It was different, it was weird, it was a new thing for us," Stump said.
The band's songs are different from much of what the music scene is offering today, making it hard for critics to decide how to categorize Fall Out Boy, now pegged as being "pop-punk emo."
"People have a tendency to put things into boxes," Stump said. "That's why we have words for what the color of someone's skin is and the littlest differences between minor things. It's not a music problem, it's a human problem. That said, we get called a lot of names and if someone's going to call us that, it's absolutely fine. You can call us a polka band if you want. I prefer that our record is liked or disliked based on its own merit. If you hate the record you should hate it because it's a shitty record, not because you don't like the name."
As for the future, things can only go up.
Fall Out Boy's cover of the song "Start Today" by Gorilla Biscuits is featured on the soundtrack to new video game "Tony Hawk's American Wasteland." They are looking forward to recording a new album following the Nintendo Fusion Tour. With the recent release of new video, "Dance, Dance," listeners are sure to hear the song everywhere.
Still, Stump is not convinced that their band will ever be huge.
"We'll never be one of those bands who'll be popping Crystal in our f*** SUV, stretch limo, Louis Vuitton sunglasses - it's not what we do, at least not on an everyday basis."
In the meantime, though, the band plans on staying devoted to the music and fans who were with them from the start.
"I hate to be clich?, but we kind of do our own thing and sometimes people pay attention and sometimes people don't"
