Album Review: Fantastic Negrito - Please Don't Be Dead (2018)
After my two-part 8-week catch up I’m a little more on the ball and it’s only been a couple of weeks since my last Album of the Week. I’ve been listening to a serious dosage of metal recently but over the last week I’ve switched my medication over to something a little more easy on the ears; Please Don’t Be Dead by Fantastic Negrito.
Whilst searching through new music releases and trying and failing to get into much of what was on offer I came across Please Don’t Be Dead and as soon as the swaggering guitar riff from the intro of opener Plastic Hamburgers started blasting out of my speakers my ears started to salivate (not literally of course, that would be worrisome). Being completely honest my first reaction was “this sounds a bit like American Woman by Lenny Kravitz” but almost immediately I was realised “wait a minute, this is not shit, it’s genius” and laughed at the sheer stupidity of me from 2 minutes ago. The music on Please Don’t Be Dead is an infectious mixture of Soul, Funk, R&B, Blues and Roots Music (I'm absolutely loving chain gang vocals right now after my mild obsession with Zeal & Ardor a few weeks ago).
The music on offer here is a wonderful combination of Jimi Hendrix-esque guitar licks, proper get down and dirty bass grooves, irresistible drumbeats, soulful backing vocals and the twinkling of piano ivories all punctuated by that often heart-wrenching quiver of a church organ. Negrito’s voice itself channels the likes of James Brown and Bobby Womack and is utterly wonderful to listen to. In fact, this album reminds me very much of Womack’s The Bravest Man in the Universe in terms of it's sound, tone and ambition; that's one of my very favourite albums and one you should definitely check out after this.
Album highlights are A Boy Named Andrew, its guitar and vocals at times evoking an epic journey across a vast desert, Transgender Biscuits with its “I got fired because I’m a ‘insert ethnic/religious group here’” chorus and groovy slide guitar and of course The Duffler with its super grimy guitar and “welcome to my life na na na na” intro and chorus. Whilst I’ve picked out some tracks in particular, every track on here is genuinely brilliant and there are a tonne of standout moments in every song and all the way through the album. If I talked about each and every one in the detail I really want to then this review would turn into a dissertation and dissolve into TL;DR territory.
Overall I really love this album, it’s a brilliant feel-good listen and a perfect companion to the amazing weather we’ve been having recently. Regardless of the weather I'm going to be listening to this album for a very long time. If you like yourself any of the genres mentioned above then give Fantastic Negrido and Please Don’t Be Dead a try. If this album gets the attention it deserves I’m confident it’ll find its way into countless “best of 2018” lists.
