Album Review: Fang Island - Fang Island
- Written by Peter Harris
A great philosopher called Andrew Fetterly Wilkes-Krier once said ‘When it’s time to party, we will party hard.’ His many worshippers (who generally call him Andrew W.K. for short) attempt, on a daily basis, to live their lives according to this tenet and if there were a cult of Andrew W.K. and its members attained higher states of consciousness and knowledge via the medium of partying, Fang Island would probably be as close to reaching this state as Tom Cruise is to finding the secrets of the Thetans.
Fang Island’s reputation for creating great party rock is seemingly under threat with album opener ‘Dreams of Dreams’. It’s as if you’ve finally received an invite to one of their legendary parties but when you turn up, crate of beer in tow, you find that everyone is playing chess and sipping sherry. As ‘Careful Crossers’cuts across the opening swirls of keyboards and the Animal Collective-like sing along, you realise you’ve been duped by a classic red herring. The chess boards are kicked away, the sherry glasses are smashed and the kegs of beer are rolled into view: it’s time to party, hard.
From here on in, there’s barely a moment’s let up from the Rhode Island rockers. ‘Daisy’ is insta-catchy. It’s rock’s equivalent of a five year old boy who’s just been given a bag of sugar and a spoon. ‘Life Coach’ is cut from similar rock cloth. It judders along with a distinctive stomp backed once again with a super catchy refrain. There’s ‘whooas’ and ‘yeeaahhhs’ and everything is set in place to make you want to join in, in whatever way you can. You can practically hear hands slapping in high five jubilation on ‘The Illinois’ as it ramps the party up a few notches and though ‘Treeton’ reins it back very slightly, it still retains all the playfulness of what’s preceded it.
Production is a little heavy handed in the bass department but this just emphasises the full on nature of the album. There’s also no fat to be trimmed anywhere; not a moment is wasted on any track and the short overall run time does a great job of keeping the balance tipped towards punchy and exciting rather than irritating.
Just like humans apparently share 99% of our DNA with chimps, Fang Island share 99% of their musical DNA with any number of run of the mill Emo acts. In another dimension, they’d be spoken about in the same circles as emo stalwarts My Chemical Romance and Jimmy Eat Worldbut thankfully, in this dimension, Fang Island occupy their very own slot in time and space and rock. It’s amazing the difference that 1% can make.