Musical and lyrical contradictions are all over ‘Almost Free’, but it gains its power from dancing through the hard times with a massive grin on your face.
While we didn’t get the batch of guitar-fueled thrashers that their past two records provided, Almost Free contains an experimental element that’s exciting to see FIDLAR lean into.
Almost Free is a FIDLAR album - brash, unhinged, wild, a tad nonsensical, but most of all, a testament to their nature.
While FIDLAR benefit from cleaned-up production, the hit-or-miss, albeit courageous, tracklist is indicative of a band that’s still workshopping their sound.
Exploring a kind of open-ended, stylistic pastiche-pop-rock informed by more eagle-eyed, worldly songwriting, FIDLAR have expanded their sonic palette on a record that seems destined to be appreciated more with time.
FIDLAR trade in some of the gaudiest radio sounds of the last three decades, but they present them with the enthusiasm of a puppy that’s dug a greasy hambone out of the trash, too gleeful to admonish. Almost Free may be obnoxious, but it’s never cynical.
To their credit, FIDLAR have made legitimate attempts to get out of their creative comfort zone and go somewhere new. That said, Almost Free is somewhat of a mess.
More power to FIDLAR if they’d rather go the Top 40 route here, but sounding like “Howlin’ for You”-era Black Keys or Cage the Elephant feels regressive for a once-fresh band.
Sure this isn’t terrible but it is bloody frustrating at times. They spend half the album talking about getting high, and half the time talking about politics, and make both sound incredibly unappetising.
#9 | / | Kerrang! |