Music

Emo, in case you missed the editorials in the  Daily Mail and Drowned In Sound, is effectively a tartrazine tantrum set to a Black Sabbath album played on 78, and indisputably the biggest emo band in the world is Fall Out Boy. They’re bessie mates with Jay-Z and the bassist/lyricist has been tending to Lindsay Lohan (but then, haven’t we all?), which begs the question: just how much can they identify with the tribulations of average teenage life? Actually, singer Patrick Stump, with the appearance and demeanour of a balding seven-year-old, probably finds it quite easy.

As their 2005 song ‘Champagne For My Real Friends, Real Pain For My Sham Friends’ suggests, FOB like to think of themselves as musical bondage trousers – a dramatic outift that polarises opinion. The reality is they’re a band who are easy to like but hard to love. ‘Infinity…’ is pop-punk without the punk. FOB might decry the aggression between scensters on lead single ‘This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race’ but what could be a more blatant escalation of hostilities than getting the world’s biggest rapper (FOB’s label exec, Jay-Z) to guest on your album and have it produced by former R&B superstar Babyface? All the clever song titles (‘Fame < Infamy’) and super-complex hooks (‘The Carpal Tunnel Of Love’) in the world can’t conceal that this is a major sop to the mainstream. Still, y’know, it’s kind of catchy.