As a long time Fall Out Boy fan, I’ve spent a few years now watching my favorite Chicago pop-punks at local venues like Chain Reaction and the Mouse House - and if, three years ago, somebody had told me the band would be playing arenas by now, I wouldn’t have believed them. But the band has been in the public eye for some time now, selling millions of records and playing bigger and bigger tours. And still it was surprising to see the group at Honda Center in Anaheim, headlining the last of several postponed Honda Civic Tour stops in SoCal that also featured +44, the Academy Is …, Paul Wall and Cobra Starship.
I skipped Cobra Starship (seen ’em too many times since their inception last summer) and Wall (who was sloppy at last year’s Powerhouse), and instead arrived during the Academy Is …’s performance. The band romped through new material from Santi and threw in the best numbers from its debut, Almost Here. Lead singer William Beckett kicked at the air and danced around while delivering pitch-perfect performances of “We’ve Got a Big Mess on Our Hands” and “Checkmarks” in his finest girlie-man emo voice. Much of the crowd knew the words and gave the band its all chanting along - a response also accorded to +44, perhaps because the L.A.-based unit formed by ex-Blink-182 members Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker was treated to a homecoming welcome by the SoCal crowd. Songs from +44’s debut, by the way, came off less electronic than on record, yet they were somehow stronger live, especially when Cobra’s keytarist Victoria Asher came out for the call-and-response number “Make You Smile.”
The Fall Out Boy show was like any other I’ve seen – sloppy but enjoyable because of crowd participation, despite the number of empty seats in the house. It may not be the best live band, but the quartet still gave its all in its first stab at arena spectacle. Flames, sparks, streamers and flash pots dotted the stage throughout the set, but as is often the case with My Chemical Romance’s shows lately, it was mostly unnecessary tricks. FOB’s production skills, like the group’s performance skills, may never improve. Still, the band offered a variety of cuts from its lengthy catalogue, coming off sharpest on new material: “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race,” “Hum Hallelujah,” “The Take Over, the Break’s Over.” (The band even tossed in a couple of covers, an impromptu version of Akon’s “Don’t Matter” and Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” which bassist Pete Wentz referred to as “the greatest song ever written.”) Overall, a decent start to this next leg of the band’s career.
… Niyaz Pirani
