The Five Best Christmas Songs (Fo’ Real)
Christmas. A time of year wherein 90% of writers feel a very real need, deep within their bones to sum up, categorize and create lists. Lists. Lists as far as the eye can see. Best albums of the year, best video games of the year, best Christmas turkey recipes, best ways to bury five bodies in the snow using only a trowel and so on.
I’m no different. I lack imagination and originality just as much as the next shit writer and so I present to you a list of the five best alternative Christmas songs (yes, really). In no particular order, hold on to your socks so I don’t knock ’em off.
Blink 182 – I Won’t Be Home For Christmas
What kind of list doesn’t have Blink-182 on it? Quite a few actually, but this one does. Released when the trio were pretty much around the top of their game and hailed as pop punk kings of the catchy hook and the saucy lyric.
Of course, this Crimbo ditty doesn’t disappoint as Mark Hoppus weaves us a Christmas tale of bitterness, assault and police brutality, all culminating in what I can only describe as a festive jail rape. Hot damn indeed.
Fall Out Boy – Yule Shoot Your Eye Out
Not exactly a tune that will fill you full of festive cheer, but it’s a classic FOB song full of the whole angsty, teen “mom and dad just don’t understand me and my fringe” kind of lyrics that we’ve all come to know and love.
Arctic Monkeys – Matt Helder’s Sings Last Christmas
What on Earth do you mean this isn’t a proper Christmas song? It’s Matt Helders… singing Last Christmas… quite possibly very pissed. If that doesn’t sum up the meaning of Christmas I don’t know what does.
Julian Casablancas – I Wish it Was Christmas Today
The Strokes frontman delivers a delightfully cheesy slice of festive electronica that thunders along. You’ll want to wrap your presents and then take some recreational drugs (probably).
On top of that it’s really catchy and only sounds like Dancing With Myself a little bit.
Snoop Dogg – Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto
I don’t really need to justify this one. Speaks for itself, surely?
That’s all. Go away.
Fall Out Boy – PAX.AM Days Review (8/10)
A quick review for a quick album.
For anyone seeking the antidote to the bloated pop ballads of Fall Out Boy’s most recent album, Save Rock and Roll, look no further than the pop punk four piece’s latest effort; PAX.AM Days.
With a mere eight tracks, none exceeding the three minute mark, Fall Out Boy have delivered an album which is the complete reverse of their last.
The tight, punky, riff fuelled songs are thrown out thick and fast, each track like a shot of adrenaline to the ears. While Save Rock And Roll harnessed Dubstep, duets and other mainstays of modern pop, PAX.AM Days owes more to The Sex Pistols and the underground indie grunge of The Hives.
While it’s usually the norm for a band to grow and experiment, Fall Out Boy have followed up their most ambitious and wide ranging sounding record with something that takes them right back to their early punk roots.
It’s fast, it’s fun and above all it is absolutely unapologetic to anyone who was just getting used to the idea of them being a band who duets with Elton John. Fall Out Boy may not have saved Rock and Roll, but they sure as hell just gave punk a shot in the arm.
Fall Out Boy Save Rock and Roll (or do they?)
Deep breath, everyone, I’m about to share a secret with you. Band’s change their sound. I honestly don’t see the point of judging an album on anything other than its own merits and faults. Is Fall Out Boy’s long awaited (well, by some) comeback album the sort of fast paced pop punkery of debut Take This to Your Grave or does it lean more towards the introspective ballads of Folie a Deux?
Truth is, it shouldn’t matter. Music will always be subjective, as surely as this review is by no means a definitive account of the quality of Save Rock and Roll. Are Fall Out Boy as good as they used to be? You might as well ask if Fall Out Boy were ever good. So let’s try our best to not compare a band that has grown during their four year hiatus to the teenage emo heart throbs they once were. Glad we got that out of the way.
Save Rock and Roll is probably the best pop album to have come out in a long old time (pause while teenage girls everywhere take to the internet to rant about how “FOB will never be pop”). Of course, claiming this doesn’t say much considering the current standard of pop music. If you look up to Nicki Minaj, you are probably brain damaged. I know I pretty much just made a case for subjectivity in music, but there are no two ways where she is concerned. Sorry.
For the most part, the album is fast, catchy and fun. Fall Out Boy haven’t lost their ear for a hook, with the funky dance bassline of Where Did the Party Go, the infectious sing along vibe of Young Volcanoes and the fantastic riff from Death Valley, the last of which incidentally, contains a very brief Dubstep breakdown. Spoiler alert, it actually works.
There are places where the album falls flat. Rat a Tat is a song I cannot for the life of me get through for the sole reason that hearing Courtney Love pronounce “it’s Courtney, bitch” makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a rusty fork and lie down to die. (A shame, since that song is pretty great otherwise).
Alone Together is a little too Backstreet Boys for my taste and title track Save Rock and Roll kind of kills itself by using an awful altered sample of one of the band’s early songs Chicago is so Two Years ago. For the entire album, the band seems to power through with such confidence and gusto, that such a call back seems out of place.
Save Rock and Roll is by no means a great album. It took me a few listens to consider it as anything more than just quite good. But at the end of the day, the way Fall Out Boy have kicked down the door and released something this different is something I can respect. I can only imagine where they’ll go next, but by all accounts, Fall Out Boy seem to be sure of a bright future.
Single Review: Fall Out Boy – My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark
Pop Punk superstars Fall Out Boy recently announced their reunion(although they insist they never actually broke up, their hiatus from 2009 onwards would suggest otherwise) with a new tour and album titled: “Save Rock and Roll”.
Queue 19 and 20 year old girls across the country dying their hair exciting colours and reactivating long dead Myspace accounts in a desperate fit of nostalgia fueled craze.
I was especially excited to hear a return to form after the disappointing last album. “Well the new album is called Save Rock and Roll” I thought. “It’s got to be a return to the straight up pop punk of old, right?” Wrong.
For an album called Save Rock and Roll, the lead single can only be some cruel joke on the part of Fall Out Boy. My Songs Know.. is a painfully empty sounding and generic piece of pop chart bollocks. A cautionary tale, a clear attempt to reinvent themselves as something more than a pop punk and becoming so much less.
Sadly, while most bands clearly change their sound to suit themselves, FOB are obviously clinging to relevance with an empty effort that lacks any heart.
You have to admire the irony. Fall Out Boy began as outsiders who hit the big time without even trying. Now they’re all dressed up as the cool kids with a chart friendly sound, and it seems that nobody wants to know.
Makin' Bacon Pancakes 