GOOD SWILL HUNTING

Nothing incapacitates my neurological system, as both a writer and a musician, quite like reviewing music. Who am I to be the gold-standard arbiter of what is good and what is not? I say this with sympathy, having consumed that cocktail of fear and anxiety that many artists are forced to swallow after pouring themselves out onto a record, only to be crudely spit out by some blowhard asshole who can’t even play a fucking power chord.

Even worse is the historic and factual realization that the all-time greats sometimes get it wrong. There’s Lester Bangs savaging Black Sabbath’s eponymous debut, and Lenny Kaye, a fantastic writer and musician, totally missing the mark in his review of the Rolling Stones cocaine opus Exile on Main Street.

And so, when CREEM reached out to me to review Fiddlehead’s third record, Death Is Nothing to Us (released Aug. 18 on Run for Cover Records), I reluctantly agreed. Then fear gripped me like a sickness. As I walked around my Boston neighborhood listening to the album, a paella of adjectives and influences cooked inside my brain.

By the time I arrived at the second track, “Sleepyhead,” I remembered the criminally overlooked early-’90s post-hardcore/emo band Lincoln, as well as their metallic (and, at times, melodic) contemporaries Converge, who bloomed from the same fertile Bay State soil that would eventually sprout Fiddlehead.

I continued to wrestle with my thoughts: “Do I hear catchy arena anthems \ike...Foo Fighters? Is that stupid? That’s stupid, right?” I needed a drink.

Sitting with a glass of Jameson, I also considered a conflict of interest— namely, my friendship with Fiddlehead frontman Patrick Flynn and guitarist Alex Dow. Gazing around, I noticed I was surrounded by blue-collar workers and lottery-ticket-scratching townies, and it finally hit me: What better impartial purists are there than the day-drinking common dive-bar regulars of South Boston? These are folk who aren’t afraid to speak their mind, even when the words have an “r” at the end of them. If blue-collar beer drinkers are crucial bellwethers for local and national elections, why would they not be fit to review new music with an open mind?

I called Flynn and Dow.

round lunchtime on a blisteringly hot July afternoon, I arrived at the absolutely glorious and sleazy shithole Croke Park, known affectionately as “Whitey’s” to the Southie locals, just as news had broken that Sinead O’Connor died. You couldn’t choose a better place and time. It was dark, depressing, and unapologetically Irish, much like the lyrics of Fiddlehead’s Flynn, who is Kennedy-esque himself in both appearance and diction.

I counted only five other people at the bar. I had a beer and a shot while waiting for Flynn and Dow to show up. When I used the piss-stink bathroom I noticed a rope of cum clinging to the bottom lip of the urinal. Rattled, I cautiously returned to my stool, then was relieved to see a crack of light sweeping across the gnarled wooden floors as the duo’s smiling faces appeared in the doorway.

While we talked about Death Is Nothing to Us, I was surprised to hear that the driving influence for the new record of a band with an ever-expanding and inclusive live crowd was introverted indie rocker Lou Barlow of Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, and Folk Implosion, and not, say, Sick of It All’s Lou Roller. Flynn expanded on this by pointing out that one of their new songs is called “True Hardcore (II),” an homage to Sebadoh’s “True Hardcore.” Although both songs are perfect for an isolated bedroom, the sequel is more at home in the lungs of their crowd-surfing fans. I was curious if there was also a simmering rivalry between Flynn and Dow after finishing their third LP—not unlike Mascis and Barlow before the latter split off into Sebadoh. However, Dow was quick to point out that Fiddlehead already are the side project of members of the bands Basement, Wolf Whistle, and Big Contest.

As a few more patrons sauntered into the bar, they unwittingly became the first people in the world to get an exclusive preview of Fiddlehead’s new LP. Bartender Mike Layne, while nodding along approvingly to opener “The Deathlife,” shouted, “This is reminding me of Clutch and Foo Fighters mixed!” When I asked if that’s a good thing, Layne responded, “Man, I’m from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and I fuckin’ love Clutch!”

Patrons Geoff Dean and Matteo Damico joined Layne with more praise as Dean remarked, “This shit is fuckin’ driving, man. It’s like fuckin’ Incubus and I don’t know what else, but I love it!” “Yeah man, this shit ain’t whiny—I wanna be in a bar and hear this,” opined Damico, who was, in fact, in a bar and hearing this.

But the record didn’t totally win over another patron, J.R., a late-middleaged man from South Boston: “So far it sounds pretty good. It’s kind of heavy metal, but I love Aerosmith.” I asked J.R. if Fiddlehead were as good as Aerosmith: “Oh no...no, no, no,” he replied before looking at Flynn and sheepishly muttering, “Sorry.”

From there Dow, Flynn, and I made our way up West Broadway to hit up another timeless dive called Tommy English’s Cottage, a dank but well-lit watering hole where construction workers and tough guys tend to assemble in the afternoon. Although we interrupted the regulars who were listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival by playing new Fiddlehead tracks, these gentlemen were kind, diplomatic, and, most important, honest.

Mark, a lumbering man with a saltand-pepper goatee, remarked, “It’s not bad, it’s kind of like Soundgarden. But I would rather be listening to CCR.”

His drinking buddy, a self-proclaimed “65-year-old gay British/Irish skinhead” named Guava, shouted, “I wish you’d have given me ecstasy before you started playing the music,” his tongue wagging and lapping up the stale air around him before continuing, “I love this shit. I could see myself smoking angel dust and headbanging to this, you know what I mean?!” (I did.)

Next to him sat a man who asked to be called “Fish,” clad in the classic townie attire of crisp, white shorts, a Polo shirt, and a golf cap, a Budweiser in his fist. Citing Frank Sinatra as his favorite singer, he still found himself impressed with Fiddlehead: “It’s great—it’s not too loud for me and has some good melody. But you really gotta sing like Sinatra to get me going!”

As we wrapped up for the afternoon, I could sense a collective sigh of relief while walking through the muggy heat of Southie. A relief for Dow and Flynn with their new record being released into the world, and a relief for me, the writer, for not getting punched in the face after turning off CCR in a dive bar.