Fang Island - Fang Island

Tue 14th Sep, 2010 in Music Reviews

I have a confession to make – I have never been able to get into The Mars Volta. It always seems to me as though they are trying to test their listener’s faith and patience by being as difficult as they possibly can. But, more than anything else, they always strike mean as so damn serious – as though they are so consumed by their art that they didn’t have any time to enjoy themselves. It’s a problem I have with a lot of prog, actually.

But, try as you might, you could never say the same about Fang Island. They paint from a similar sonic palette as do TMV, but sound like they are having a whole bundle of fun. So you have those shifting time signatures, those battles between the various instruments as they all try to carve out their own space in very crowded tracks, and that same intensity – the experience of your ears being positively bombarded by noise. But, amidst all this, you can’t escape the feeling that the members of Fang Island are just having an absolute blast. It’s like someone fused the experimentation of The Mars Volta with the ridiculous pop silliness of Boston, or Journey, or Foreigner. And then decided to set it in the future, where everything sounds a little bit like a video game.

And that’s an important thing – for me, at least. I don’t want to listen to an album that has no joy in it, no spark, no sense of having had some fun. Some of my favorite bands are mid-70s arena rockers, like Grand Funk or Foghat, or current groups like Eagles Of Death Metal – even Lil’ Wayne. Now, I’m the first person to admit that these bands will never change the world, and none of them could be called visionary without your tongue firmly in your cheek (except Lil’ Wayne – the man is a genius). But they are fun, and great to listen to, and you can never be in any doubt that everyone is having a blast the whole time they’re playing.

Take Daisy, for example, the lead single from the album. It opens with “do dos” and “woah-woahs” for about 15 seconds before the drums build, the guitars join in, and all of a sudden everything is crashing and banging and going a little bit crazy. But then the “woah-woah” choir kicks back in while the instruments take a break, but then everything comes crashing back in again and keeps on crashing all over itself until the end of the track. You don’t need to listen closely for minute details, you don’t need to analyse it in great depth – you just need to join in the party.

And I’ll admit that Fang Island won’t do it for everybody. Only one song has what you could call ‘lyrics’, and the whole gang tends to sing together, rather than have a ‘singer’ per se. And, yes, the whole thing is more than a little bit silly. But how can you go past something that the band themselves describe as “everyone high-fiving everyone”?