FIDLAR are so good at what they do. ‘SURVIVING THE DREAM’, their first full-length release in five years, lives in the same extra-temporal house party as 2013’s ‘FIDLAR’ and 2015’s ‘TOO’, separated from the real world by a curtain of screeching skate-punk breakdowns, alcohol, drugs, and screaming mosh-pit bait. It’s classic FIDLAR, but to call it a return to form does a disservice to 2019’s ‘Almost Free’, which saw the band verging on sophisticated (!) for their most musically varied release to date.
That said, ‘SURVIVING THE DREAM’ definitely takes all the musical maturity honed on AF and applies it firmly to the FIDLAR blueprint: sunny hooks, scuzzy instrumentals, lyrics you want to scrawl on a toilet door and yell along with a load of other sweaty ‘SAD KIDS’. It was conscious, FIDLAR’s choice to focus on songs that feel like you’ve not heard them properly till you’ve heard them live. They had intended on a break after AF, but not one as long as the pandemic forced them to take – and now they’re back with a vengeance to make up for the lost moshes.
Album opener ‘FIX ME’ is a concentrated shot of everything that makes them so good: Zac Carper’s gravelly belt, lyrics like ‘ I’M THE TYPE OF CRAZY THAT’S NOT THE CUTE TYPE ’ and similar kitchen-sink confessionals, a careening set of riffs and an ebb and flow of stomping beats. The album could wrap up there and you’d have experienced everything you love about FIDLAR – bu.