Don’t laugh this is serious!
Well maybe not…. but anyway Fat Goth return to once again rock you cotton socks off despite the unfortunate handicap of being neither Fat nor indeed Goth.
‘One Hundred Percent Suave’ is album number three for this Dundee three piece and the follow up to their breakthrough album ‘Stud’ which in their own words: “if Stud is the overweight, unhygienic, eye contact-avoiding weirdo sitting in darkest corners of the nightclub, One Hundred Percent Suave is the pilled-up, pint-downing, football-chanting nightmare throwing it down on the dance floor and bothering all the females in his general vicinity”.
If you have been paying attention to The Goth thus far then don’t panic as this doesn’t mean they have gone crazy and changed their sound. For the uninitiated the ‘sound’ is a hybrid of quirky surf and American alt rock underpinned with caustic lyrics resulting in a refreshingly unique yet still hooks laden concoction.
Things start unconventionally (standard procedure to be honest) with the polite summertime vibes of ‘*disclaimer’ so it down to the frenetic ‘Sweet Mister Scary’ to properly gets this ball rolling with buzzing RIFFS and fizzing bass lines propelling a completely off kilter rhythm.
And all nine tracks on offer contain these features in abundance all backed up by frontman Fraser Stewart’s versatile vocal style that veers from soft croon to metallic grunt and everything in-between that adds a surging dynamic tension to proceedings.
The description “Off Kilter” and even “Eccentric” are very apt but do not mistake this as a disguise for a lack of song writing talent or playing ability as all three members have both in spades and every song will worm their way into your head, whether it be the heaviness of ‘Sin Altar’ of the initial jaunty pop into jazz freak out of ‘I, Corruption’.
The sign of a great album is if it teaches you something new in the process of rocking out, and here the final track is a melancholic ballad called ‘Caligynephobia’ which is apparently “The Fear of Beautiful Women”
So enter the world of Fat Goth… you won’t regret it.
