Review: An overblown, amiable Fall Out Boy rocks Ruoff loyalists through weather delay

By the time Fall Out Boy’s headlining blowout at Ruoff Music Center hit the Magic 8 Ball portion, you could almost see the poor guys' sigh of relief.

Lead singer Patrick Stump was gassed (likely from attempting vocal acrobatics with his bandmates, 25,000 fans and a piano on his back — more on that later). Drummer Andy Hurley and guitarist Joe Trohman held down the fort dutifully but with little signs of life.

And Pete Wentz, the band’s bassist and de facto frontman? He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

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He teased that with the 8 Ball bit — some kind of take on Taylor Swift’s “surprise song” concept, where she performs a different track from her discography at each show on the Eras Tour in addition to her regular set list. On Fall Out Boy’s "So Much For (Tour) Dust" run, the band asks an animated Magic 8 Ball displayed in what I’ve dubbed the Mystery Circle (more on that later, too) what song they should play next.

At Ruoff, Wentz wondered aloud whether the group should just call it a night right there, fan favorites yet to be performed and encore be damned.

“Should we just pack it up and go home?” he prompted, clearly meant to elicit some emphatic objections and eventual celebrations when the 8 Ball demanded they stick around. But this was brushing 11 p.m., and after a marathon set stretched further by a weather delay, I’d guess some part of Wentz wished the 8 Ball would go off script and grant them a mercy kill.

Fall Out Boy's show, while technically impressive, was an overwhelming, puzzling spectacle to behold. I can only imagine the toll it takes to perform it nearly every night, as they've has done since their tour, promoting their eighth studio album “So Much (for) Stardust,” kicked off in Chicago on June 21.

Special effects banged, crashed and sizzled around them throughout the set. The band’s arrival was punctuated with what I can only describe as a close-range firework display, which lingered through opener “Love From the Other Side,” cinematic follow-up “The Phoenix” and the iconic “Sugar We’re Going Down.”

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To bemoan volume at a rock concert feels heinous, but believe me, it’s warranted. Ruoff does not have the luxury of stadium size, so those explosives were merely feet away. The first few rattled me so much that I spent the rest of the show cautious of every upcoming chorus or big moment, hands never far from my ears lest I need to protect myself from a repeat performance.

Fall Out Boy, at least on this tour, falls firmly onto team Doing Too Much. If the pyro wasn’t enough, the visuals left no doubt as to the excess.

Pop quiz: What do a bunch of sea creatures, a large tree with roots woven across its trunk and some kind of creepy face poking out of the top left have in common? Nothing, probably — nor are they remotely connected to Fall Out Boy’s discography. And yet, there they were.

Then there was, of course, the Mystery Circle, which displayed animations — a psychedelic rabbit silhouette, an owl whose eyes changed color every time it looked in another direction, an unsettlingly sentient comet — seemingly at random throughout the set. What came next was anyone’s guess, a rotation with the intrigue of those bowling alley clips that go to great lengths to tell you that you knocked down a spare.

And just when I thought it couldn’t get weirder, the giant Dobermann Pinscher head emerged in all its glory. Yes, a giant Dobermann Pinscher head, which is the perfect decoration for “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race,” I guess.

Fall Out Boy rocked this one, but the image that will stick with me is Stump prompting the head to mouth along with the song’s chanting chorus. Just a massive, floating dog face bobbing to the tune of one of the early 2000s' defining anthems — eyes dead, jaw falling open and snapping shut like a pop-punk Pac-Man.

All the while, the band isn’t really feeling it, at least from what I could see. They ranged from pleasantly amused (Stump) to bored out of their minds (everyone else) and hardly matched the energy of the audience.

That left a lot on the shoulders of their lead singer, who carried the band musically and emotionally. Most of Fall Out Boy’s songs see Stump at the tippy top of a vocal range that can really get up there, and the setlist put that to the test. A three-song solo run on the piano ended with a head-scratching “Don’t Stop Believin’” cover that put Stump in Steve Perry territory — a tough ask for anyone, but especially someone more than an hour into yelping and riffing as high as they possibly can.

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The fans, to their immense credit, were all in. When the group launched into “Where Did The Party Go” (at the behest of the 8 Ball), the increase in decibels from cheers alone was palpable. A few changes to the expected setlist — the addition of deep cuts “Homesick at Space Camp” and “Bang The Doldrums” — amped things up, and even at old faithfuls like “Dance, Dance” and “Save Rock and Roll,” the audience screamed, danced and swayed with their phone flashlights high in the air accordingly.

But most of the band couldn’t be bothered to keep up. Between the hour-long weather delay (which scrapped opener Royal and The Serpent’s set entirely) and what I figure is the general wear and tear of touring for the better part of two decades, Fall Out Boy was all but checked out. It was such a rushed affair that they didn’t even bother with the usual encore song and dance, heading straight into a flurry of “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark,” “Thnks fr the Mmrs,” “Centuries” and “Saturday” and exiting promptly after the culmination of the run.

What’s truly upsetting is how the overblown technical displays and the underwhelming attitudes pulled from some great music. If I weren’t so distracted by the pomp and circumstance, I would’ve mentioned it earlier: Fall Out Boy is a good band, and they sound like it. These songs are well-worn and rehearsed to the point of muscle memory, and the selection of old favorites and newer cuts thrilled the audience.

It was so clearly a crowd of loyalists, which is what makes the show such a disappointing miss. Fall Out Boy fans have been around for decades, and they don’t need the party tricks to enjoy the group.

Smaller sections with songs like “A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More ‘Touch Me’” and “Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy,” where the frills were put on hold and we caught a flashes of what most fans fell in love with in the first place, were the most exciting. The big rock moments only served to create distance — the showmanship a barrier instead of a bonus.

Glimpses of a genuine connection between audience and performer were buried behind these. How can your fans reach out when a wall of smoke and sparklers makes you untouchable? How can they look you in the eye when you disappear from the center of the stage and park it at soundboard for a song (which Wentz did with the help of some production magic), parading through the crowd, head hung low?

The answer: They can’t, despite their best efforts. Fans can scream and sing with all the enthusiasm they can muster, but if the artist isn’t into it, that earnestness is for not. All we’re left with is a guy with flames shooting from the head of his bass, an adoring audience behind him, looking like he can’t picture a worse way to spend a night.

Contact Pulliam Fellow Heather Bushman at HBushman@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @hmb_1013.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Fall Out Boy's spectacle headlines Ruoff Music Center