Chances are, if you were a college freshman at the beginning of the decade, drinking away the reality of student loan debt and limited postgrad job prospects, you probably had FIDLAR queued up somewhere on your Spotify playlist.<\/p>\n
The band\u2019s songs and videos reveled in self-loathing and druggy excess. Yet they always retained a clever, twisted sense of humor (see \u201cCheap Beer,\u201d<\/a> the \u201cCocaine\u201d video<\/a>) and, at times, even had something to say about the role of drugs in society (see the first \u201cWest Coast\u201d video with Henry Rollins).<\/p>\n In other words, FIDLAR became the soundtrack of middle-class millennial self-sabotage by being so open about fucking up.<\/p>\n But FIDLAR isn\u2019t as young as it used to be. Time has passed and members have since gotten clean.<\/a> A band can only get so far on crazy stories. So with Almost Free, FIDLAR takes some of the opportunities for musical growth and experimentation that it missed out on with the last album, Too.<\/p>\n FIDLAR\u2019s music typically gets labeled as \u201cL.A. surfer punk.\u201d While the group doesn\u2019t abandon this subgenre on Almost Free, the new album shows there is plenty of room to wiggle within the band\u2019s signature sound.<\/p>\n One of the most experimental songs on the album is the opener \u201cGet Off My Rock,\u201d an anti-gentrification anthem inspired by recent changes in L.A.\u2019s Highland Park and Hawaii.<\/a> Singer Zac Carper practically raps his rage through offbeat samples and drum-machine production that would fit neatly on a Beastie Boys track. The twanging guitar in the chorus adds a hint of mid-90s Beck to the mix.<\/p>\n At its core though, FIDLAR plays punk. Punk relies on snotty, attention-grabbing lyrics to skewer its subjects, and this album contains some of the group\u2019s greatest hits:<\/p>\n \u201cMeditate, you can get rich quick\/Don\u2019t talk, just \u2018like\u2019 my shit.\u201d (\u201cCan\u2019t You See\u201d).<\/p>\n