IN REVIEW: FIDLAR - "Almost Free"

About four years removed from their promising second record, FIDLAR's third starts off in head-scratching fashion. Get Off My Rock features slide guitar, a thumping beat and chest-beating rap verses alongside samples that call to mind Beastie Boys and Beck. It's amusing, but also a defiantly performed deflection of expectations; put simply, for a band on the rise to use something so strange as their album opener takes serious balls.

Thankfully, the rest of Almost Free isn't so confrontational and stubbornly strange. Can't You See finds FIDLAR opting for groove and coming up with perhaps their most enduring single to date. Elsewhere, there are allusions to the maturity that time has offered the band through recounting of their darkest days. Throughout, there are references to past addictions and the struggles to overcome them, all filtered through the filter of high energy music that buries the sadness and anxiety under upbeat, good time music.

There's also a weirdly political turn in the form of Too Real, which is well within their rights but comes out of left field considering what came before it not just on their other albums but, indeed, on this one too. It sticks out like a sore thumb for anyone who's listening attentively; while it's not unwelcome, it is a little disorienting. Ditto album closer Good Times Are Over, which unveils a level of Pixies worship that hasn't been seen since the '90s; again, not a bad song, just a little out of place thematically here.

These are the nitpicks that result from listening to a band who, three albums into their career, have delivered their most diverse and restlessly genre-mashing effort for a third time running. It's admirable to hear such a wide array of influences manifest itself on the same record, but at a certain point one has to wonder whether or not FIDLAR is interested in finding a sound of their own.

January 25, 2019 • Dine Alone
Highlights Can't You See • Alcohol • Thought. Mouth.