FIDLAR (2019)

One Liner: Punky LA dudes with some tunefully fun, cheeky jams.

Wikipedia Genre: Skate punk, garage punk, garage rock, surf punk, punk rock, indie rock, pop punk (long list of similar genres)
Home: L.A.

Poster Position: 11

Weekend One Only.

Thoughts:  The name stands for "Fuck It Dog, Life's A Risk," which I'm officially going to use at work from here on out.  "Your Honor, I'd like to respond to counsel's objection by stating Fuck It Dog, Life's A Risk."  I see no downside to this new course of action.  By the way, their origin story is cool - apparently the founding members met when one was an engineer and one was an intern at a recording studio, and they would hang when the studio was empty and created some jams.

They were a late addition to the poster back in 2015 (crazy it was that long ago, and yet it is still in my head that they were a late addition), and I generally dug the cut of their jib.  Here is what I had to say about them at the time:

"Lo-fi skate punk.  One album, two EPs, a few singles, and a lot of damn fun.  The opening track to their full length (2013's FIDLAR) is called "Cheap Beer," and with zero irony, they just chug right on through a two minute blast of "I DRINK CHEAP BEER, SO ... WHAT, FUCK YOU!"  It's kinda awesome.  Elsewhere on the album, they get more melodic and go lean just a touch into the pop realm, but you wouldn't seriously call this pop punk at all. Grimy and raw, they barely crack 3 minutes on any song.

The most listened-to track on Spotify is "No Waves," [true even now in 2019, although the stream count is up to 14.5 million now] from that 2013 album, with almost 2.6 million listens.

That video is super OK.  Made me laugh.  And the track is good too - loose but driving, feels like you should pogo and spill drinks on people.  "Cheap Beer" is their second most listened-to track, but I'm going to break out this other one that I thought was pretty good. Here is "Awkward," clocking in with just over a million listens on Spotify, and winner of the best cover art award.

Reminds me of The Pixies and Sum 41.  "I'll probably end up fuckin' up and make it super awkward!"
And overall, I dug jamming these dudes for the past two days.  I got really busy at work and was too lazy to look up the next band to hear, but they are a fun blast of do-it-yourself sneer. We'll see how the schedule works out, but it might be fun to go see them tear things up."

After that review, they released another album, 2015's Too, and I think it's their best album of the three.  "West Coast," "40Oz on Repeat," "Sober," and "Bad Habits" are all pretty solid, sneering, punkish rock and I'm in on it.  Here is that last one, third most streamed (from this album) at 5.0 million.

And the album itself also veers into a more tuneful, catchy sound - I still wouldn't go so far as to say pop, but stuff like "Hey Johnny" has real singing and some harmonies.  Of course, as soon as that song is over, "Stupid Decisions" kicks in and obliterates that lovely feeling into more screaming about bad choices.

Then they put out another album in 2019, and my review of it was not fawning.  "FIDLAR - Almost Free.  I've enjoyed their tunes in the past, kind of a sneering punky Sum 41 thing, mixed with an almost Brit rock strut in other bits.  They open the album with this super tightly bound Kid Rock tribute song called "Get Off My Rock" that sounds very much like a song that Rock would have actually put out into the world.  Barking dogs, altered vocals, weird little effects stolen from rap songs, southern harmonica soul licks, and a yelled chorus.  Classic.  Also very annoying.  The most streamed tune is called "Can't You See" and its more of the Brit rock sound - not bad actually.

Much better groove than the rest of the album - most of the rest of the album is way more plain and boringly hard.  This one slinks and struts a little, gets your shoulder rolling.  But that song isn't enough to salvage the rest of the disc, I'll let it go."

I've come around on it a little - "Too Real" kinda jams, "Flake" has this Queens of the Stone Age quality that I dig, and "Can't You See" actually grooves - kinda sounds like Arctic Monkeys when they used to rule - less punk, more groove.

I'd go check these dudes out.  I'm a little surprised at how high they are on the poster - I never hear them mentioned by anyone and none of their stuff appears to be on the radio.  Their Wikipedia mentions playing Kimmel and Conan and whatnot, but that was all back in 2015.  They've had a few appearances in video games and TV shows and whatnot, but I dunno, just seems like they are higher on this poster than their notoriety would require.  Whatever, let's go pogo!