Fall Out Boy – Take This To Your Grave
Fueled By Ramen
May 6, 2003

What It Sounds Like:  Big pop-punk choruses filled with tons of broken hearts, tongue-in-cheek references, and heavy hits of cynicism.

Fall Out Boy’s first record is tons of fun, only to be outdone by its mammoth of a successor, two thousand and five’s From Under The Cork Tree.   I actually never even heard this first record, or even of Fall Out Boy in general, until a couple weeks before their sophomore record was released.  A girl that I was trying to date in college wanted to go see them play at Rocketown, so I went out and bought those tickets in about two seconds flat.  Can you imagine these guys playing Rocketown now?  There’s just no way!  They played a good show – I remember everything being very “in line”, in a way where you could say, “These guys are smart, and they’re not just playing music – they’re putting on actual show, and they know exactly who their audience is.”  I’ll never forget Pete Wentz taking an short interlude to inform the audience that they had been getting a lot of hate mail and a lot of contact from various organizations because of the things they have been saying in their shows about girls and woman, and that they were being disrespectful and juvenile.  He looked straight-faced at the audience and very sincerely said something to the effect of – “I just want to set the record straight once and for all.  We don’t hate woman.  Not one bit.  (pause) We hate f–king everybody.”

They then seamlessly flew right into the bitter breakup / screw you anthem Tell That Mick He Just Made My List Of Things To Do Today.

Well calculated, Fall Out Boy.  You guys aren’t stupid.  You know how to sell yourselves, there is no doubt.

Tell That Mick…is actually probably my favorite song on the record, and also serves as the album opener.  It’s a full speed ahead rocker that offers enough differentiation throughout the verses and chorus to keep things more than interesting and exciting while lead singer Patrick Stump plows through Pete Wentz-written lines like:

Let’s play this game
Called “when you catch fire”.
I wouldn’t piss to put you out, oh no
Stop burning bridges
And drive off of them.
So I can forget about
You.

Elsewhere, we find more bitterness.  We find more open ended questions without any solid answers.  But Fall Out Boy make it as fun as possible.  These songs can get pretty thick with the whole “what’s my purpose / where is my life going?” routine, but you’ve never had a better time going through it all.  Whether you don’t have the slightest clue what you’re doing after high school (Saturday), or you’ve got some anger and jealousy for that two-faced girl who just won’t give you the time of day (pretty much everything else), these lyrics mashed up with pop-punk done right are a winning combo.  These songs don’t run together – you can remember specific choruses and verses all throughout this record, and for me, that’s got the making of a fantastic debut.  Is some of it juvenile?  Of course.  But it’s a good freaking time; there is no doubt – and with so many mediocre bands who filled this genre years ago, there was a reason that Fall Out Boy rose above the rest.

8/10

If you had to listen to two tracks:  Tell That Mick He Just Made My List Of Things To Do Today / Grand Theft Autumn