The real deal
Veterans take it outside and sound as vital as ever.
Long before Six60, L.A.B. and Drax Project’s domination of the local album charts, Wellington’s Fat Freddy’s Drop established themselves as one of our most important and innovative bands.
Their distinctive amalgam of soul, reggae, R’n’B, jazz, dub and pop was delivered on cornerstone albums Based on a True Story, which included their irrepressible breakout single Wandering Eye (2005),
Blackbird (debuting at No 1 on the New Zealand music charts in 2013) and Dr Boondigga and the Big BW (2015).
Energetic touring and expansive live albums, notably Live at Roundhouse London, recorded in 2008, earned them acclaim here and overseas.
The 2015 album Bays continued to broaden their palette (sonic unease, world weariness by singer Dallas Tamaira, groove-riding into the Caribbean) but 2019’s
Special Edition Part 1 sounded more like a placeholder.
Last year’s Lock-In, which has now spent more than 30 weeks in the local top 20, confidently reset the compass.
Their new album, Wairunga, released in advance of a planned national tour and named for their rural retreat above Waimārama Beach, where the album was recorded outdoors, rehits Wairunga Blues (from Bays) and Bones (Blackbird)
alongside five new songs.
There’s a languid, Pasifika-soul sound to the humid opener, Coffee Black,
which becomes increasingly oppressive as percussion and horns enter until the repeated “you’re falling but you feel like you’re flying” takes on dark resonances. The idyll turns menacing with “it’s been wearing me down, I can’t take it no more, you got the world in your hands but still you want more”.
It’s an impressive opener leading into their springheeled revision of Bones,
which pulls up the chugging funk for more urgency with jazzy horns stinging and swinging over the popping bass and keyboards, before a leisurely dubadelic ride into the sunset.
Wairunga Blues similarly arrives with more punch, although, again, not quite a substantial reinvention. So attention falls on the new material: the retro-dancehall reggae lope of
Bush Telegraph, with its electropop colouring, subtle Nyabinghi-referencing percussion, dub touches and MC Slave’s voice to the fore; the electronicacum-dub overdrive of the relentless Dig Deep; and
Shady, which emerges out of a minimal, repeated musical phrase and rhythm into a hand-clap, shape-shifting stadium-shaker.
And the 11-minute-plus psychedelic-dub riddim-driven groove of Leave Your Window Open is exceptional home listening, and no doubt soon to become a live favourite.
With snippets of chat between some tracks, Wairunga is a mood-evoking album recorded live, with superb mixing afterwards.
Our decades-long association with Fat Freddy’s Drop can mean higher expectations and taking their special gifts for granted as we nod to the easy familiarity of their signature sound.
But on the evidence of some intelligent envelope-pushing and genre-blending here, they’ll be around after others have passed this way to lesser effect. l
Fat Freddy’s Drop, Wairunga, is available now on vinyl and digital platforms.
Planned tour dates: Christchurch Town Hall, September 10; Dunedin Town Hall, September 11; Trafalgar Centre, Nelson, September
16; Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, September 18; Auckland Town Hall, September 23 (sold out) and 24; The Factory, Hamilton, September 25.