FIDGET - Ashes & Dust

Fidget - Ashes & Dust

12 songs
43:10 minutes
***** ****
Redfield

Bandpage

Really good bands sometimes need time before you really start to love their music. Düsseldorf five-piece Fidget, whose impressive discography started in 2002, are now back with their third full length album Ashes & Dust. Instead of relying on the services of a well known studio, the band just decided to create their own where they had all the time in the world to record their songs the way they wanted them to sound. And with ninety percent of current releases sounding often too close to contemporary trends, Fidget chose the less safe path by playing clearly Nineties influenced indie pop power punk where the vocals are shared by guitarist Tom and the very charismatic Philippines born Darline.

You won’t find any mathy angularity on Ashes & Dust, and the songs are never complicated for their own sake. Instead you are in the presence of a band that has mastered the craft of songwriting and who isn’t scared of sounding sometimes maybe too pop for an alternative audience. But the juicy production prevents Fidget from ever sounding harmless.

Their mainly short songs would be perfect airplay fodder if radio stations all of a sudden decided to broadcast good music, and especially the carefree up-tempo track Stalewater is the best song I have heard so far this year. Fidget have found their own niche, and it’s hard to compare them to other bands. Maybe they are a better natured Rainer Maria or Slingshot Dakota, and there are also undeniable though probably unintended parallels to Luxembourg pop punk legend Petrograd, but in the end, Fidget do just their very own stuff, and are not afraid even to unpack a theremin as on 5 Min. Left. If you’re fed up with fashionable music and want to go back to a time when music was about writing catchy tunes, you absolutely have to get Ashes & Dust.

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