Fidlar review – hot hooks and smartass koans from dirtbag LA punks

‘There’s a lot of shoes onstage,” says Zac Carper, gesturing to the discarded footwear which, along with shirts and pint pots of beer, has been raining on to the stage since the show began nearly an hour ago. “Why do you fuckin’ throw shoes anyway? You’re fucking yourselves.”

But then self-defeating stupidity is very much a grand theme for Los Angeleno punks Fidlar. Carper may have turned the corner on his heroin addiction a few years ago, but his songs draw on a certain dirtbag lifestyle, pitched between the snotty hedonism of Fight for Your Right-era Beastie Boys and Nirvana’s nihilistic edge – the sound of overmedicated kids with bruised self-esteem and motormouths.

Fidlar possess an enviable pop know-how, their choppy, serrated punk veering between the Ramones, Blink-182, the Replacements and Ty Segall – all bubblegum choruses, howitzer dynamics and chant-along lyrics. And Carper has a keen slacker wit, packaging his dysfunction as smartass koans, such as, “All I got are bad habits / But they’re my bad habits” (Bad Habits) and “I’m so fucking cheap / And I’m so fucking broke” (Wake Bake Skate). When allied to chainsaw guitars and idiot-proof hooks that never sound as if they’re trying too hard, they compose anthems that hurtle like hot-wired cars, and, well, compel kids to throw their shoes.

How much substance you can derive from Fidlar’s Holden-Caulfield-on-pills punk rock possibly depends on your age and sobriety, though the charm of their hymns to being broke and wasted is endlessly infectious. “That’s hands-down the dumbest song we’ve ever written,” Carper grins, as a song in praise of “eating Del Taco at 3am and playing videogames” careens to a close. But it’s a dumbness close to genius.