Fat Freddys Drop - Boondigga & The Big BW Album Review

They're a band you may or may not have heard of, but if this is the first time you've come across their name, you can thank me with an email. From Auckland, in New Zealand, they've been travelling the globe playing to audiences of electric musical types for anywhere up to five years. Following the success of their first album, Fat Freddy's Drop have gone back to the studio with their highly anticipated new album.

Dallas Tamaira's silky smooth voice is frustratingly good, so understated that you want him to throw caution to the wind and throw some throaty vocals, but the melody and rhythms he creates that go against your own musical judgement consistently prove your inclinations wrong. This is a guy with a disciplined approach.

There's an underlying reggae and dub feeling throughout most of the album, with plenty of references to hip hop, but at times it can sound like Massive Attack or even the strange musical styling of Son of Dave. There really is plenty going on in this album so don't expect to get to the bottom of what they're all about by the end of it, there sound is as eclectic as it gets.

Lyrically, everything is in its place bar one tracks refusal to stop telling the listener that 'the party's really in the kitchen' -  the only place where the album thins out. Despite this, I can imagine the novelty of these lyrics being performed live as a moment that binds the crowd together. Get 1000 people together to nod to Fat Freddy's Drop and the lyrics are probably the last thing on their mind, its the encompassing and eclectic sound rooted in nodworthy rhythms that people have come to love from this southern hemisphere act.

The well crafted song structures are not something seen on their 2005 breakthrough album of 'Based on a True Story' which had longer tracks, with more room for long jamming sessions. The new album certainly still has that lengthy live feel, but its clear there has been a gear change in song structure. If you want that raw jam fuelled sound, go an see them in live. In fact, just go and see them live, that's where the party really is, since it's definitely not in the kitchen.

 

4/5

Phil Harper