Fat Freddy’s Drop started out as a curiosity, a New Zealand lounge reggae outfit.
Along the way, they have refined their strengths into something rather different: Blackbird pays as many respects to Afrobeat or Atlantic Soul as it does to Jamaica, and the lengthy songs settle into righteous extended grooves. The closer, “Bohannon”, is a guttural chugging guitar juggernaut that could be Wall-era Pink Floyd.
4 out of 5 stars