White Fang - Full Time Freaks (Metal Postcard Records)
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| White Fang - Full Time Freaks |
Release Date: 5th May 2014
Now I love my complex, heartfelt
music with a strong emotional or political message. I also like raw, simple
music that's been made just for the shits and giggles of it. Portland crew White
Fang definitely fall in to the latter category and their forthcoming album
'Full Time Freaks' is a masterclass in music for the sake of it. The opening
two tracks, 'Gonna Get It' and 'Shut Up', are pitched somewhere between Liam
Lynch, Presidents of The United States Of America and South Park. On 'Doin' The
Dam Thing' is a little more like an actual song but it's still like a really,
really baked Weezer having a go at writing a Beach Boys song that comes out
sounding like passable Monkees. In an act of beautiful teenage rebellion,
'Goodbye To Bedtime' is a scuzzed up, breakneck punk buzz that is pure pleasure
in a way that the Beastie Boys achieved with 'Fight For Your Right'. And then
everything goes a bit country with 'Talking To The Apple' which has some
soft'n'gentle guitars and a real sense that these guys might have listened to
too much Carlos Santana and Randy Newman whilst in a stoned fog of their own
making.
Title track 'Full Time Freaks'
starts with an intermittent and unpredictable synth stab that gathers pace and
quickly transports us in to a version of Tron where the riders have a bar to
hang out in after the race and all the ladies are at least 16 bit. These guys
are having fun but there is some talent there as well and, with a name like
White Fang, they could do whatever they want in the future, style wise. 'Waste
My Time' has a delicious soft guitar thrum to it that is all about the first
light of dawn while 'High On Life' is as lo-fi as it gets but has an innocence
to it that Evan Dando would thoroughly approve of. Predictably, there are a few
drug references on here - 'Pass The Grass' is up next - but when you're doing
surf garage rock with cheap 80s synths I don't think anyone will really care -
and if they do they're just being square.
The penultimate track from Rikky,
Smile, Jerry and Funkle (awesome names, well done) is 'Talkin' To Gary On The
Corner' which is probably about shooting the shit with your drug dealer but I
like to think it's about asking for life advice from Gary Coleman. The album
finishes up with 'Before I Pass Out' which is, as it sounds, a rambling,
incoherent train of thought that has long since derailed and drifted over the
Mountains of the American midwest, never to stop at a station again. White Fang
are never going to write a heart-felt paean to Nelson Mandela but what they
have done is essentially write the music for a night in getting stoned with
your buddies if that story ever needed to be made in to a low rent, off Broadway
musical. It could happen...
More information: https://www.facebook.com/whitefang420?fref=ts