Fall Out Boy back in step at Xcel Center

Rebounding its way back to sports-arena status at Xcel Energy Center on Sunday night, Fall Out Boy has officially become the pop/punk equivalent of Matthew McConaughey's "Dazed and Confused" character Wooderson.

The band keeps getting older, but the teenage girls who come to its concerts have stayed the same age.

Chicago's hottest rock band of the 2000s was well on its way to a Good Charlotte-like fadeaway in 2009 when it went on a four-year hiatus. Last year's album "American Beauty/American Psycho," however, launched the second act of F.O.B.'s career, landing the foursome back on Top 40 radio and into the queues of teenage YouTube users everywhere.

A majority of the nearly 13,000 fans Sunday were due at school in the morning. Credit for the strong turnout also goes to the two younger bands on the bill, each with a growing under-18 fan base.

Lowell, Mass.-reared leadoff band Pvris left the crowd a little dumbstruck with its high-adrenaline dance-punk, a bit too heavy and forceful for the early slot. However, singer Lyndsey Gunnulfsen connected well with the audience, coming off like an unlikely hybrid of Paramore's Hayley Williams and Trent Reznor.

In the middle slot, Awolnation worked the crowd like its members' lives depended on it, but the concertgoers remained lifeless for about half its hourlong set. The Southern California quintet's screamy melodies and thrashy pop partly suffered from poor acoustics, like all its knobs were turned too high. Frontman Aaron Bruno also proved to be quite a knob, though.

A guy who plays most of the band's instruments on record, Bruno seemed awkward in the showy frontman role without anything but a microphone in hand. He danced around like David Lee Roth as a yoga instructor, and his banter came off even more clumsily.

Of course, Bruno might have been taking his cue from Fall Out Boy's mouthpiece bassist Pete Wentz, who used to be known/adored/despised for his wacky, witty banter. On Sunday, Wentz, 36, still tried to be the center of attention too often but talked more wisely and preacherly, like the fans' cool uncle instead of the smart-aleck in gym class.

"Things are kind of crazy in this world now, but I look out at this crowd and remember youth always wins," he said early in the show.

At least Fall Out Boy's youthful, earnest roar-pop hasn't lost its luster. Fans who were young enough to be screaming over broken crayons when "Sugar, We're Going Down" came out in 2005 screamed in delight when the band delivered it.

More impressive than the older tunes' continued vitality, several of the band's newer tunes proved to be the highlights in the 100-minute set.

The bulldozing "American Beauty/American Psycho" offered pure adrenaline overload, while "Save Rock 'n' Roll" came off like the band's new anthem for the ages (or teen ages, anyway). Singer Patrick Stump sounded like another of rock's emo pioneers, Steve Perry of Journey, as he sat at the piano and delivered the latter, with an image of David Bowie appearing across the video screen as the song wrapped. They're not saviors, but at last F.O.B. make decent acolytes.

chrisr@startribune.com

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