With the forthcoming release of their fourth studio album SURVIVING THE DREAM on the horizon, FIDLAR has dropped their new single “SAD KIDS.” Serving as the latest taste of their first full-length project in over half a decade, the track meshes punk-meets-hyper-pop sonics with a succinct, yet wistful message: sometimes even the broken-hearted kids just want to party.
Earlier this summer, the group officially announced SURVIVING THE DREAM alongside a pair of scorching singles “GET OFF MY WAVE” and “FIX ME” – the latter of which premiered alongside a Sosie-Bacon starring karaoke music video – and most recently dropped their sunburnt surf-punk track “DOWN N OUT.”
Self-produced and self-recorded at Balboa Recording Studio in East LA, SURVIVING THE DREAM is many things for vocalist-guitarist Zac Carper, drummer Max Kuehn, and bassist Brandon Schwartzel. A rekindling of the DIYness from their early days together. A reaction to the youthful energy buzzing within the venues of their recent live shows. A reckoning with aging and evolving. Finding themselves faced with existential downtime several years ago – brought on by a planned hiatus that was incidentally prolonged by the pandemic – FIDLAR returned feeling an odd discombobulation. In some ways everything was the same; and in others, everything was completely different. As a band whose identity has forever been tethered to getting fucked up, their attitude toward it has changed. Partly that’s because they’re older now, and partly because Carper was recently diagnosed with bi-polar disorder; something that has helped him make sense of how he acted and felt at certain times in the past, especially when making music.
The band’s first album in 5 years SURVIVING THE DREAM arrives September 20, 2024.
What do you think of FIDLAR’s new single, “SAD KIDS”?
