Number One With A Bullet

Let me now praise the punk-pop-rock conglomeration which hath bestowed upon itself the name "Fall Out Boy". All I know about them is that their song, "Sugar We're Goin Down" has one of the oddest videos I have seen in some time, a bizarre Romeo and Juliet tale about a boy with antlers who falls in love with a girl who is not appendaged similarly. Girl's Dad doesnt like it, oh, no, but could Dad be harboring an ugly secret? I'll let you decide for yourself.

I know nothing of the band but this song. But a great song it is, one of those songs that you keep thinking you're going to get tired of but then you dont, and then all of the sudden its the best thing and you cant leave your spot at the curb without cranking the track up on the car stereo, if only to drown out the ominous whizzing noise your car has started to make. But there you are bellowing along with the muttonchopped lead singer with the apparently slight but not distracting speech impediment (nothing wrong with that, just stating the facts, ma'am) and then you get to the chorus (which is repeated like eight times in the course of four minutes) and you're harmonizing along with:

We're going down down in an earlier round
And sugar, we're going down swinging
I'll be your number one with a bullet
A loaded God complex, cock it and pull it (REPEAT)

And always I think of that last line, "What in the hell does he mean? A loaded God complex?" But there's so much to roll around in your mouth with those eleven syllables, and Muttonchops Guy sings it with so much relish and belief and directness, that after the fourteenth time or so It Just Doesnt Matter Anymore, he's going to win this girl, by God, and for him to do it involves the use of a "loaded God complex." It sounds like something very final that Wile E. Coyote might have ordered out of the Acme Catalog to nail the road runner. What the heck.

I am generally amazed at how good the rock and roll on the radio is right now. I also love that very dramatic Alkaline Trio track, "Time To Waste" with one of the most incredibly propulsive choruses I have ever heard, and one of the funniest sets of couplets I've heard in ages:

You had time to waste
And I'm not sorry
Such a basket case
Hide the cutlery

Sure, there are a few out there that I do not for the life of me understand the appeal of -- Kings of Leon comes to mind -- but many of the downloads I've pulled off Itunes lately come straight off that MTV2 Saturday night countdown. Were I you, and interested in such things, I would check it out.

Coming soon: The new Paste Magazine DVD.