FIDLAR – ‘FIDLAR’ album review: powerful debut
Those dirty, dirty boys from Los Angeles, FIDLAR, have managed to float the scum over the pond and bring us an album full of diamonds in the rough. Grot ‘n’ roll punk from the New World can tend to rely on screaming lyrics and heavy bass to show they’re the real deal, but FIDLAR have stylised a debut album which still contains all the fuzz of the fair whilst sounding genuine.
For these boys prodding at the decaying tooth of Americana rotted by pop, this debut album is raucous, unabashed and unadulterated. We fly into the record with ‘Cheap Beer’, which is in keeping all the demanding behaviour of a snotty-nosed brat and continues with the similarly pumping guitars of ‘Stoked and Broke’.
The obvious comparison for FIDLAR is Black Lips, another troop from America that have been delivering the same brand of rambunctious recordings. Hints at Dan Sartain’s disgustingly simple delivery are also present, and ‘No Waves’ is another gutter guitar fest with a pulsating rhythm and a doff of the cap to the aforementioned Black Lips, detailing the boredom of a young adolescent American. FIDLAR, though, are using this preset and delivering their own westside style of American punk.
The album is relentless in its style and is unwavering with ‘Whore’, another punk-inspired three minutes of desperation, drink and drugs. The Americana continues with ‘Max Can’t Surf’ and ‘Gimmie Something’, which are slower and more polished with a more surf rock nuance. Bringing us Brits to the beach, a beach that actually has sun, a beach full of beautiful girls drinking and smoking, all backlit by noodling guitars.
Fun and frolics are entrenched in this debut record from the speciality juvenile delinquents. As terrifyingly hedonistic as these boys, Max, Brandon, Zac, and Elvis, are, they still possess some intellectual integrity. The album starts to slow down as if the night is coming to a close and chills down with the ambience of ‘5 to 9’ and continues with ‘LDA’.
The arrival of the morning, however, does not bring with it a shining new day of opportunity and possibility but more of the same scuzz-rock as FIDLAR end with ‘Wait for the Man’ and ‘Cocaine’. These two tracks blast through with a sneer of the lip and leave us smashed on the floor like so many Coors bottles.
FIDLAR, with this self-titled debut album, have established themselves as a band for the jilted generation, a declaration of “we don’t give a fuck” for all to see. Whilst displaying every classic sign of acting out, FIDLAR are capturing an audience of adolescents to which this album will be a battle cry of boredom. I hope the Americans don’t do what they normally do when faced with an intelligent delinquent and medicate them to the point of mediocrity.
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