FIDLAR are back with their new single + video “DOWN N OUT,” The SoCal trio’s latest preview of their forthcoming album SURVIVING THE DREAM. A sunburnt surf punk track with propulsive guitars and tongue-in-cheek spoken-word banter, the song couples signature FIDLAR ingredients while grappling with the harsh realities of aging as frontman Zac Carper sings “I am old as fuck / I’ve made better stuff / down and out on drugs / down and out in love“. It’s a theme woven throughout the fabric of SURVIVING THE DREAM, the band’s long-awaited fourth studio LP and first in over five years that will arrive on September 20, 2024.
“This is a song about growing up, seeing yourself change, and not giving a fuck,” says Zac about ‘DOWN N OUT’. “I gave up drugs to fall in love and I’ve gotta say: love is better than drugs.”
Last month, the group officially announced SURVIVING THE DREAM with a red-hot double-single “GET OFF MY WAVE” and “FIX ME” – the latter of which premiered alongside a music video featuring an unhinged karaoke performance from Sosie Bacon.
Self-produced and self-recorded at Balboa Recording Studio in East LA, SURVIVING THE DREAM is many things for the Southern California trio comprised of Zac Carper, Max Kuehn, and Brandon Schwartzel. An embrace of their DIY roots. A reaction to the youthful kinetic energy packed into rooms at 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.
Are you rocking with “DOWN N OUT” from FIDLAR?
