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 – but guess what? Twelve more tracks! — — ‘I DON’T WANNA DO THIS’, ‘GET OFF MY WAVE’, ‘DOG HOUSE’ and ‘SAD KIDS’ join ‘FIX ME’ down the noisier end of the spectrum, churning along at maximum energy. But FIDLAR know all too well that big moments are nothing without dynamic contrast, so they give us a smorgasbord of funky moments, lighter moments, acoustic moments that are so smiley they’re grimacing, and it all comes together to make sure everything hits perfectly.
‘NUDGE’ rolls it all into one, with a cyclical groove strutting through the verses before devolving into a wall of fuzz. Down the other end, injecting the light, you’ve got tracks like ‘DOWN N OUT’, which sonically delivers on the first line (‘I just wanna have fun!’ – disregard the rest of the lyrics if you just fancy a singsong, or pay close attention if you want a little catharsis). ‘BREAK YOUR HEART’ is a moody lament with a painfully chirpy melody, reflecting some of the ugly truths that can come with loving someone who loves getting fucked up.
‘MAKING SHIT UP’ is sugary sweet in sound but again, the words tell a more brutal story. That’s the FIDLAR trademark, more so than the beer and the weed and the jumping around, and that’s what we get to hear the most of on ‘SURVIVING THE DREAM’. The contrast between the high-octane, laissez-faire punk spirit and the stuff that you’re throwing yourself into it to escape from.
Well, if you’ve wrung the rest of FIDLAR’s discography dry for all the catharsis it can possibly bring you, amazing news: you can stick on ‘SURVIVING THE DREAM’, get partying, and get processing all over again. 8/10 Words: Ims Taylor —.
