FIDLAR: Sex, Drugs, and Punk Rock

F*** it dog, life's a risk.

Now make an acronym out of that sentence. You end up with FIDLAR, the name of the band that has made the best album I have yet to hear in this still very New Year.

FIDLAR is a group of four guys from God knows where. I don't want to know to be honest. These guys are so out of this world that they don't deserve to be defined by their placement on a map. All I need to know is, based on the lyrics and no nonsense style of their songs that they don't give a crap about anything and are hammered nearly 24/7. They also smoke enough weed to challenge any hip-hop artist, pop pills, have slightly more than an affinity for cocaine, and make some occasional references to heroin use. All of this while playing some incredible punk.

FIDLAR's self-titled debut feels less like an album of songs, but a capturing of their lifestyle in a 40 oz. of Old English. It's announced blatantly in the first song title alone, "Cheap Beer", a blisteringly paced and loud Ramones style tune, and absolutely pounded home in the song's chorus, "I drink cheap beer, so what, f*** you," that is the a million times catchier than it has any right to be.

Keeping in line with the fast paced, high intensity life style the band lives, the album sprints along at a non-stop pace. No song exceeds the four minute mark and most of them ring in at just around two and a half minutes. At times the album threatens to slow down, especially when it gets to track five, "Whore", where we threaten to get the eventual hangover from all of the crazy antics these guys have managed to sing about in the first four tracks, but instead the song promptly speeds up and the band never bothers to slow down again.

The album is mostly full of hard, fuzzy, guitar driven tracks but has moments of softness, at least compared to the other songs that populate the album. This is seen in the surf rock inspired "No Waves" that despite its slightly calmer demeanor, still features the lyrics "I feel like a cokehead" and the lead singer complaining about how he feels like he can't get drunk anymore since he's on the floor.

What truly makes this album works above all is the emotion. My God, this is where so many bands could learn from FIDLAR. What they're not doing is by any means something new, let's face it, because bands like Wavves and a few others have been playing a similar style of music for a few years now. But FIDLAR has so much pure guts and balls pouring out of nearly every song in this album that you get swept up in everything they're giving you, even if a few of the guitar riffs sound a bit like some other bands.

I don't know much about FIDLAR, but I know these guys are the real deal. This album is lightning in a bottle. I realized this when after my first listen I didn't find myself afraid that they were destroying themselves right off, but instead hoped that they all managed to stay alive long enough to get another album out of them.

No doubt about it, buy this album. Scream along to the choruses like a maniac like I have been for the last week or so. Stay away from hard drugs and let FIDLAR do all the work for you. Better yet, join me on April 8^th at the Brighton Music Hall in Boston when FIDLAR will make a crowd of less than 500 people likely beat the ever living crap out of each other just before Wavves comes on after and finishes us off. I may walk out of there with a few teeth gone, a few more than that chipped, and a black eye, but after all, f*** it dog, life's a risk.