FiveDFit’s “Super Galactic” starts innocently enough; strumming electric guitar strings and creating a fundamental harmony that could as easily usher forth a pop single as it could a raging rock track. While this is going to wind up being the latter, we can’t tell as much in these first few moments, creating a sense of vulnerability and uncertainty that’s creeping out from behind the amplifiers one note at a time. There isn’t much coming between artists and audience here, and why should there be? FiveDFit has all the right ingredients to whip up something especially spicy for rock fans in “Super Galactic,” and clouding the material with a lot of excesses wouldn’t have just been silly – it would have destroyed the integrity of their debut song.
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The hook in this single isn’t quite as climactic as it could have been, but if these guys are trying to live by the alternative rock playbook of the 1990s, the chorus isn’t supposed to be over the top. It’s supposed to be the subtle release of tension that stops off between the two most important sets of verses in the song, which is more or less what we’re getting out of “Super Galactic.” The lyrics content definitely brings to mind another retro player in AV Super Sunshine, but I wouldn’t say the body of the poeticisms is as eccentric as some of the other output you’d hear just browsing around the western rock underground at the moment.
Tonality is something that matters to FiveDFit, and it’s evident just in seeing the lengths they went to for us to get as clear and toned a sound from their guitar parts as we do in “Super Galactic.” This isn’t solid-state emulation or some post-recording nonsense filtration worked into the mix; we’re getting some warm, striking fretwork that doesn’t buckle beneath the weight of the bassline, and relative to what the majority of rock singles that I’ve been hearing out of this band’s scene have been offering up as of late, this is both the heaviest and the most straightforwardly produced, as to keep all of the fat trimmed from the brawn this group’s sound can produce. If it doesn’t add to the narrative, these players aren’t putting it in the track.
I hadn’t heard of FiveDFit before getting turned on to “Super Galactic” from a peer in the underground, but I can see where they’re likely going to get a lot of praise from the indie rock community, which has been embracing a throwback culture as of the past couple of years. I wouldn’t have been able to guess that this was where the international circuit would bend in 2022, but for all the overly experimental sounds that FiveDFit’s contemporaries are readily willing to engage in on the mainstream half of this industry, I think that the black and white stylization of their music has the potential to be a refreshing addition to what was previously going to be a lackluster summer rock playlist.
Garth Thomas