Fat Freddy's Drop

BY SIMON SWEETMAN

It started in 2001. There was an album called Live at the Matterhorn - it only had four tracks but it wasn't an EP - the shortest cut was 12 minutes long. Supposedly this album caught Fat Freddy's Drop in improvisational form. Every minute of every song sounded the same to me. And I had the brutal bad luck to be working in a music store when this was gaining word-of-mouth hype; so I heard this album a lot.

I didn't hate it as soon as I heard it - but the album very quickly started to mean less and less with every listen. There were no secrets in this recording, no moments that revealed themselves after you had invested time in hearing the full piece; it all just sounded the same - one long, bloated, floating, run-on groove. And though I would never be as disingenuous as to say that you cannot have groove in a group without a drummer I still, to this day, think that Fat Freddy's subverted approach to this type of music (essentially being drummer-less) is a boring, not well thought out gimmick. Nothing more than a gimmick.

People talked about how you had to see this band live. I didn't think you needed to see the band live.

There was a period there where, living in Wellington, unless you claimed to love Fat Freddy's Drop (and mostly it was just a claim: few who claimed to love the band ever seemed able to back it up) it could feel like you were trapped in The Quiet Earth.

Things got worse in 2005 when Fat Freddy's finally dropped the debut studio album, Based on a True Story. This boring, watered-down version of the group's already heavily diluted, sedated reggae/dub/roots sound was a snoozefest. It promptly cruised up the charts, won every category at the New Zealand Music Awards and became the soundtrack for a summer BBQ - a dubious honour I would have thought - but the spread was like a virus: over 100,000 copies have been sold. It was shipped overseas (in expat care-parcels with bottles of L&P, Emily Perkins novels and copies of Nature's Best). And it turned a portion of the population on to the equally bland stylings of bands like The Black Seeds, Hollie Smith and Twinset. Yippee!

Good on these people for making music - I have nothing against them personally - but having seen many of them perform in other ensembles over the years and knowing that in most cases they are genuinely very talented I find it insulting to the craft of music that they would want to churn out the same-sounding butter-lite "grooves" that Fat Freddy's Drop creates.

I had never seen the band live. People continue to talk about how seeing FFD live is the real deal.

On Friday night (just been) I saw Fat Freddy's Drop live.

I made a joke updating my Facebook status. I wrote: Simon is seeing Fat Freddy's Drop tonight....which is great because I haven't been sleeping at all well lately...There were a few comments of support; ticks of approval. Some people clicked to "like" my status.

But would my status change?

Sometimes you head to gigs and think you might be blown away even if you have previously not liked the artist. You may even continue to not care about the artist's recorded work but you hope to be blown away by seeing them live. I felt that way when I first saw Norah Jones. Her phenomenally successful debut album was boring but I had this feeling, when sent along to review her show, that it might be a ripper. She might have a slick jazz backing unit and the songs might come alive when performed. No. I was wrong. Norah was a bore. A sleeping bag would have been handy to have.

But the same was not true with Michael Buble. I could care less about his tired diet-Sinatra schtick. And his albums are getting worse - his original compositions are not fun to hear - but his live show was fun. He was dynamic, funny, friendly, engaging and the band was sharp. I will never hope that there will one day be a great Buble album to represent what I saw live - the truth is I don't care. If there is that's also fine. But I saw him deliver a great show.

So, I had mixed feelings about seeing Fat Freddy' Drop live - and I figured that sitting amongst the sycophants my head would do this:

What I ended up seeing was as monumentally underwhelming, insipid and uninspired as I had always assumed the band would be when playing live.

But beyond that it was surreal: the Town Hall was transformed into a wannabe jazz club for the Jazz Festival; that's fine. But one of its largest audiences (the Freddy's pandemic continues) sat with wines and beers and chatted while FFD coasted along. I could hear the chatter of people, rigid in their seats, discussing whether it would rain tomorrow, and who would be picking Susie up from camp. But then, when each "song" finally concluded - after some For Today-styled horn parps and lyrics that featured heavy use of the words "home", "creation", "love", "hope" and "feels so good"- there were hoots of applause, fits of clapping and nods of approval.

I can best describe it as:  the largest collection I have ever seen of people prepared to pay $60 for the privilege of ignoring a bland band that is incapable of connecting with its audience only to then worship them when there was a vague idea that each song might be ending.

Music does different things for different people. I will never understand the appeal of this group. Good on them for selling over 100,000 copies; remarkable when considering the cloaked intentions of a boring album were stitched together with some of that ingenious invisible thread. The smoke and mirrors, rather than the band, must be applauded.

But isn't it time that the joke ended? Isn't it time to call it in and stop perpetuating this strange myth?

Come in Fat Freddy's Drop. Please - stop hurting music.

Oh, and the group had a drummer. He sat and clicked his stick against the rim; he is a far better player than the group's music let him be. It summed up the redundancy of having talented players waft and drift along with "songs" that are here-for-half-an-hour, gone-from-your-mind-instantly.

Fat Freddy's: STOP!