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Feature

FIDLAR: "We have horns on this record, fucking trumpets and saxophones and trombones and shit"

In the three years since FIDLAR last put out a record, a lot has changed - but a charged up Zac Carper is ready to let the fire burn again.

Published: 12:14 pm, August 28, 2018 Words: Dillon Eastoe.

"Nothing amazes me any more. I mean literally every day somebody tells me, 'Oh did you hear Trump said this shit?' At this point, nothing amazes me." The world has changed in the three years since LA punks FIDLAR put out their last record ‘Too', and even more so since their 2013 self-titled debut. Having made their name singing about drinking, skating and getting high, ‘Too' saw them contend with overdoses and death, but also carefree abandon on the magnificent ‘West Coast'. With the band briefly in the UK for a short summer tour, vocalist Zac Carper is forthright about the madness engulfing his homeland, and the effect it's had on him. "Our community is... America is so fucked up; it's so fucked up right now. I've always thought America has been the laughing stock of the world generally, but it has become so prevalent right now. I've totally accepted that. Like, yeah cool, you know what? We're fucked." FIDLAR haven't let the fake news dystopia bog them down in their time off, with a new album in the bag, just waiting for sign-off from the higher-ups. Carper admits that despite their reputation as a feel-good band, the American carnage couldn't help but creep into the writing of the new record. "There are definitely some lyrics about all that on the new record, what we've been going through as the members of an American society, and travelling and touring. There's even a song where the second lyric is like 'fuck America'. We're on a trip of trying to make music that's reflective of what we've been going through the last couple years."



"It's a shocking thing, all these kids taking so many drugs and then dying" Zac

Whether it's drinking, drugs or death, FIDLAR have never been a band to mince their words, and racist politicians it seems are no exception to that rule. "When we put this record out it's our third record, so it's crazy that this much has changed in three fucking record cycles, that's insane." A brief digression into the brilliance of Green Day's 1994 standard ‘Dookie' gives a tantalising hint at the surge of inspiration that the racist turd in the White House has provided. "Speaking of Green Day, me and Brandon the bass player actually had an idea. You know how Green Day did 'American Idiot', right? And it became a whole musical? We actually started thinking about doing 'FIDLAR on the Roof' but making it about the modern day, what's going on in LA. Fiddler on the Roof is about you know immigration in the Russia era. We've been talking about doing immigration in the ICE era. That'd be great, right? That's a great idea, right? I'm not crazy, right?" No crazier than the insanity gripping the USA in 2018. Bad news however if you're desperate to see FIDLAR stomping the boards at your local theatre this year, this one might not be seeing the light of day any time soon, and it isn't what they've spent the last few years perfecting. That honour goes to a clutch of songs recorded with producer Ricky Reed, of Twenty One Pilots fame, tentatively scheduled for release later this year. With time to stretch their legs, FIDLAR took the reach in new directions with their music and lyrics. "Me and Elvis [Kuehn, guitars], it's the first time that we like worked together where we sing on songs together. [Ricky] really helped us join together as a band, and there are so many different influences on this new record... There was a lot of Hispanic music and Los Angeles music, a lot of percussive stuff and rhythm-based stuff with more of a groove to it instead of straight up four-on-the-floor punk rock. We figured out how to use a tambourine I guess," Zac laughs.



"It's not just party punk; we're not NOFX" Zac

Despite the extra time and resources at their disposal, the quartet have consciously guarded against overloading the new songs with too many overdubs, which they'd gleefully indulged in on ‘Too'. "Trying to learn how to put in less things. The second record had so many things in it, sounds, distortion and effects. This record we're trying to learn how to like just have one guitar, one vocal, instead of two vocals. We're trying to learn how to use fewer things and make them louder, I guess." Zac pauses to contemplate the impossible task of explaining unreleased music over a crackling phone line. "It's kind of a weird thing that we've been trying to learn from this record. Most people try to add more things, and we're trying to take away things. Just guitar, bass drums and some weird percussion." So far the only teaser of the new album is the standalone single ‘Alcohol', which takes their familiar punky snarl and pairs it with a more seductive groove than we've become used to. "I think a little bit, that one was kind of like a different approach. We were in a desert in El Paso, right next to Mexico, so we had an engineer that was teaching us how to do Spanish percussive stuff. We were really into it for a long time, so we just kept doing it. You know how our first record, the last song was ‘Cocaine' which is like one note the whole song, and this song ‘Alcohol' is like two notes, that's how I look at it." Progress indeed. The band's other recent release was a cover of the Pink Floyd classic ‘Have a Cigar', which as is normally the case with FIDLAR, was motivated by more than just a passing appreciation for the tune. "You know that song is about like record labels? A lot of it was like, you know Lil Peep died? He OD'd on Fentanyl, and that was a big thing in the Soundcloud rapper world - taking Xanax, Fentanyl, and that shit. It's a shocking thing, all these kids taking so many drugs and then dying basically and record labels just being okay with that." Despite the abandon of the band's music, Carper has a serious and sensitive side and clearly sounds affected by the death of the American rapper. "And that's why ‘Have a Cigar' is literally like a song that Pink Floyd made about record labels wanting to shill a band and shit like that." "Especially now, the elements of back in the day with cocaine and heroin and whatever, right now it's like pharmaceuticals, it's crazy. The intro of that cover is Lil Peep; it was like a full tribute to him." Zac's tone changes notably as he considers the implications of the song and the depressing fact that it's still relevant forty years later. "That broke my heart. I thought he was going to change the world, and it is still changing the world it's just it sucks that he had to die. He was 20, that's fucked. That's too young." Young isn't likely a word Zac would use to describe his own band, being nearly ten years into their existence and on the cusp of their third full record. "Uh I think we're just old now, it's happened, it's weird," Carper states, not denying that ageing has affected the way the new songs have come together. "For me, lyrical maturity - I'm always trying to be poetic, and I'm so dumb in that way. I hardly know how to speak proper English… hence ‘Wake Bake Skate', 'I drink cheap beer, so what? Fuck you'." Carper acknowledges that he's been trying to be more economical in the way he writes lyrics. "Instead of raw emotion it's like a little bit more thought out but with fewer words. I just don't know how to explain it, man, it's just trying to make sense with fewer words. It's easy to overload things, especially with words."



"It's been a fucking crazy trip; this record is us putting everything out on the fucking line" Zac