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Jan 21, 2013 Issue #44 - Best of 2012 - Grimes By Hays Davis

Sometimes an album comes along that seems naturally like the right thing at just the right time. Should you need one, FIDLAR is the perfect antidote to 2012.

30 years ago this would have been a hardcore album, but these days a musical extreme isn’t required to stir a welcome gust of dank, morning-after spilled-beer air. It seems so simple, since locating a new rock album by one band or another isn’t particularly difficult, and considering that the sound of the L.A. group FIDLAR isn’t exactly original. But maybe that’s it. Throw enough heaping handfuls of things you like into a pot and it just might stir into your new favorite flavor.

FIDLAR is a punk-spirited rock & roll record whose original source material is alive and a millimeter below its vinyl surface. It helps that the four men of FIDLAR are happy to bitch, brag, and bellow about whatever’s on their minds while tearing along from one song to another. With chords lifted from Aerosmith’s “Toys in the Attic” and some “Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba” peeled off The Trashmen’s “Surfin’Bird” 45, the band hurls this middle-finger unison chant: “I-drink-cheap-beer-so-what-fuck-you.”

“Stoked and Broke” offers a statement of purpose: “I just want to get really high/Smoke weed until I die/I don’t ever want to get a job/Because I’m fucked up today and nothing’s wrong.” Not that the lifestyle of FIDLAR’s lyrics is always a bed of bong loads, however. “No Waves” delivers a litany of bummer sensations: “I feel, feel like a cokehead/I feel, feel like I can’t get drunk no more.”

And so one can live vicariously through FIDLAR as they revel in their moment or suffer through what you’d prefer to avoid. Meanwhile, with flakes of Rocket from the Crypt, early Cheap Trick, Distillers, and others flashing and fading from song to song, this record plays as easy as a pack-a-day habit.

(www.fidlar.tumblr.com)

Author rating: 7.5/10