Holy Mary Mother Of Zion.

The Best Band You’ve Never Heard.

WARNING: BEFORE YOU GO ANYWHERE, AND IF YOU HAVE SPOTIFY, START HERE: Fat Freddy’s Drop

Right so it’s probably about time to write another long article about one of the bands which has been ever-present in the music I have been listening to for the past year, Fat Freddy’s Drop. They come and go in phases of transition, but still literally get better every time I listen to them. Why? Probably because they’re all very talented musicians, each bringing an interpretation of their respective instrument that is not only as fresh as the dew on your front lawn in the morning, but bordering on pioneering when combined. But it’s more likely that it’s because their interpretation of Jazz, Soul, Rythm & Blues, Dub and Reggae (not to mention Funk, a cheeky bit of Disco and some infectiously cool Charleston-esque breakdowns) makes for one deep ocean of sound to drown yourself in.

The first time I heard the sound that these guys produce when they play was probably a defining moment of my life. No joke. It’s late in the afternoon, maybe 4pm, downtown in Sydney, Australia. There’s a fair amount of rush-hour traffic flowing around the city’s gargantuan network of roads. I’m a few months into being 18 years old, on a road trip from Melbourne to Cairns that I had only agreed to go on less than two weeks before when I was on the other side of the world, in a small peak-district town just outside of Manchester, United Kindom. The sun is shining in through the windscreen, Dom and I are probably wearing our sunglasses, to tone down the warm glare. We’ve just left Andrew Young’s house, after fish and chips and a swim around the rocks at Coogee Beach. We’re casually gravitating towards North Sydney via the the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, the not-as-famous transportation counterpart of the city’s hallmark harbour bridge. Dom is on the iPod, having taken the opportunity to introduce me to the soulfullness of ‘Flashback’, which on analysis, was a successful choice for a first Fat Freddy’s Drop listen.

We’re not in a hurry, having had a brief but pretty hectic 24 hours in the city. Initially intending to park up and sleep in a spot near the Royal Botanic Gardens, we’d contacted Andrew in the early evening, met his brother who directed us towards the family residence in Randwick, picked up Andrew from work at Fitness First before grabbing a kebab at Coogee, picking up Andrew’s buddy Luqman, going for a late night city sightseeing trip which ended with pancakes at The Rocks by the Bridge and a winding down session of 1 on 1 Halo that did not get old til we realised that it was rather outrageously infringing on the daylight hours of ‘tomorrow’.

Though stuttery and edgy at first, the opening verse from Joe Dukie (otherwise known as Dallas Tamaira) reassures me that in fact, this song is going to be a deep and comforting embrace of nonchalant soulful ambiguity. Which rather conveniently, is exactly what is needed as we pull out of the urban jungle. I’m not too bothered about the fact that I’ve left my wallet at Andrew’s, a bit of a schoolboy error, though after calling him to establish this, the man kindly agrees to personally return it at a spot on the other side of the harbour to save us having to head back into the fray, against the general volume of people commuting out of the CBD at the end of the day.

Fast forward a year, I’m at the end of the first year of a law degree, my cousin is staying with me for some last week of term partying, he’s been familiar with the Drop now for a good 6 months, I’d done my bit in passing onto him ‘Based on A True Story’ (their first studio album) before I’d started my degree and tells me that he hasn’t stopped listening to them since. After listening to them for the rest of the road trip, and then throughout the ensuing summer at home, I’m pretty familiar with them too, I’d even made a friend on my dorm corridor through mutual apreciation of them, something which is definitely one of the best things about music.

Their music has got some kind of cynically well thought out, genre-encompassing chemistry that is perfected, as I now know, over constant tour performances, basically live jam sessions out of which songs eventually emerge in their own time (these guys work to ‘Fat Freddy’s time’, an unconventional interpretation of chronological order that I’m not even sure includes years, months, days or even hours)and make it onto their records. In other words, they only release the songs that are good enough to warrant playing again, and don’t get written in one sitting, but over a distillation period which removes impurities and viscosity problems until only the uju remains.

A friend once told me something along the lines of “This is what pop should sound like” when summarising the Drop, while comparison to the popular music movement may in fact attract stigma in these musically turbulent times, let’s not forget that Pop used to be (slash still is on some levels) good. Being good at pop music was a difficult thing, while not difficult to produce on a whim, writing a song that musically and lyrically was both simple enough on the surface for the masses and to an extent deeply complex enough for the opinionated and ‘well-listened’ audience is to walk a fine line. And Fat Freddy’s Drop do this almost effortlessly now, it’s shocking, but at the same time comforting to realise how anonymous they are, but then -again this is a good thing- so are a lot of bands.

Turning back to the music itself, in the words of Joe Dukie in ‘Big BW’, the opening track of Dr Boondigga and the Big BW, the band’s sophomore album, “You’ve gotta know what you’re running from, before you know where you’re runnin’ to; what you leave behind”. I strongly recommend sitting through ‘Based on A True Story’ in it’s entirety at least into the double digits, just to hammer home the sound of the Drop. In order to fully appreciate the how the band and their synergy has evolved over the years, not just between albums, but as the collective has begun to fuse. If you’re feeling really keen, you could even hit up ‘Live at the Matterhorn’, a 2001 live album which documents a performance from which, at the turn of the millennium, the jams that would form Based On A True Story were born. Apart from being a pretty cool album title, which hints at the words ‘concept album’, a phrase which is guaranteed to send me into a deluded and giddy state, the name is actually an accurate description of the process involved in taking the band’s mammoth jams and turning them into digestible tracks, at some point potentially losing a ‘length’ element, but benefiting from the distillation effect of such album-making. There’s still periods of rise and fall, elation and sombre soulfulness, so everybody’s a winner.

Incidentally, after reading the Wikipedia article on them (from which you will find I have obtained may facts on the band but have in fact used them to add to a personal interpretation of them and not just fake one) the album’s second title is apparently interpreted as: Dr. Boondigga (’some evil creature who is trying to sign us to a major label’) and the Big Brain Wash (the Big BW). Zing! Alarm bells literally ring in my head when I read this. If I had a checklist, it would be ticked as follows: this is a concept album (TICK), born out of live jams (TICK), which preaches to the masses about the joys of being a generally soulful and self-content mother fucker(MASSIVE TICK), released on their own label; the Drop (TICK), that basically takes a stab at everything it means nowadays to be popular, mainstream, and backed by a big corporate label (BIG TICK).

See I could basically end this review there, they’ve ticked all the boxes for me, they can do no more wrong, but then I decided that going to a Fat Freddy’s Drop gig on the 1st of December 2009 would probably be the only way I could really ever die happy. Let alone write an article to put on a co-owned, not-for-profit-but-really-ought-to-make-me-some-money-soon-would-be-nice website giving them massive, big-time, props, word-ups, respect and all that jazz.

It’s a Tuesday, and I’m on the early-evening train from Nottingham to Manchester, having completed a whole day at uni in order to justify attending this mid-week gig, I’ve even brought along some reading to casually do for a tutorial I plan to attend back in Nottingham at midday, Wednesday. Because I’m so organised that I can literally seamlessly phase in and out of work/play/work like a liquid big shot cool guy. But actually because I’m optimistic and naive, and never ever turn down the chance to believe that I can make it back to uni and that tutorial all in good time. I get in to Manchester at 7.30 and hook up with Liam and Hannah and head over to Hannah’s house to get a little happy for the gig. Doors supposedly opened at half 7 so I’m in quite a rush to reach a requisite level of happiness, something which with the benefit of hindsight was understandable, but when we turn up just after 8 we realise that there’s a support act playing and the band aren’t on ’til 9. (”Could do with being a little bit more happy”) So we remonstrate by giving the bar and smoking area at Academy 2 our undivided attention for the best part of half an hour, before we made like sardines and got as near as the front as possible for the gig.

The lights are low and I’m pretty keen to be overwhelmed by some huge bass ASAP, enter Dobie Blaze (keyboards), Jetlag Johnson (guitar) and DJ Fitchie (big bad sequencer) who take the stage for what promises to be one seriously pumping intro session. Almost immediately I realise that not only are they going to kick of one serious jam here, but they’re going to jump straight into the deep end with ‘Shiverman’ a 10 and a half minute tune off the new album that is one hell of a genre-coasting big-boy that takes you off-guard in the best way possible. My cousin fucking loves this song and so by the time the rest of the band takes to the stage I’m promptly holding my phone above my head in an attempt to give him an idea of what these guys sound like live. It’s not long before I realise he’s probably getting nothing but a pounding bassline recording which definitely will not be agreeing with the mobile-phone speaker on the other end of the line. An MMS picture of the stage will have to do for now. Shiverman is followed up by Boondigga, the best ear-friendly single you’ve never heard on national radio, except in New Zealand. After this it’s clear when Ho Pepa, the trombonist, removes his blazer so that he’s down to a vest and slacks, that one sweaty skank-sesh is in order. All the rastas in Manchester appear to be in attendance, and it’s obvious that this band attracts a selective audience. From white university-student girls with dreads, to old timer rastamen, everybody’s having a skankingly good time. The brass section is off its own nut, these guys are so crucial to the sound of The Drop and Hopepa, Tony Chang (trombone) and Chopper Reedz (sax) all are given chance to solo as well as dish out the signature Fat Freddy’s riffs together. Trying to keep track in my head, I’m pretty sure that it’s taken them a good half hour to get through 2 and a half songs, there’s never any significant pause between songs, they just jam in and out of every one, it’s great. I couldn’t actually believe it but Joe Dukie is laying down those soulful vocals just like on the albums, he’s looping hooks and verses, harmonising and singing over his already overly soulful self until I’m pretty sure I’ve reached some sort of complete form of satisfaction. We’re taken through ‘Roady’,in which we were treated to a verse or two from MC Slave who’s touring with the band, as well as ‘Pull the Catch’ and ‘Ray Ray’ and were even treated to a track which I’m pretty sure is a ‘work in progress’, introduced over the tour to audiences before it’s final evolution can make it to the next album. I’m ecstatic to be taking part in the Fat Freddy’s process. The final track of the set before the encore turns out to be ‘This Room’ a personal favourite from the first album, I’ve given up trying to count songs now and when the chorus suddenly morphs into a version of Bob Marley’s ‘Waiting in Vain’, there’s probably more logic in counting the number of times I’ve been made progressively happier by the music, the answer is uh, like, alot. In the space of 2 hours, the time it would take for your average band to get through nearly twenty songs, I can hardly count ten tracks here, but these guys made it count, and by the time they leave the stage, I’m quite happy to sit/stand/live through the 8 or so hours it would probably take them to get through the rest of the songs they have on record.

I never made that tutorial.