by B.Snapp (@snappstare.bsky.social)
In April 2025, Portland-transplanted-to-Philly post-punk art rockers Fib released their second LP Heavy Lifting. It’s been four years since their first self-titled 2021 album and the excitement for their new LP was announced in February by Julia’s War Recordings, helmed by Douglas Dulgarian, who praised the band’s live shows and the guys themselves for their visual art and friendship since arriving in Philadelphia. In his words, the band is “completely unique and individual, and although you can certainly hear the influences… I am always completely knocked off center when I hear or see what they’re creating.”
Fib is a four-piece including Logan Adam (bass), Gage M (vocals, guitar), Damien Cindy (guitar), and Charlie Libby Watt (drums) who recorded primarily at their home in Philadelphia with “some additional instrumentation” at Studio South. What they’ve turned out in Heavy Lifting sounds quite the opposite of what the title suggests. It comes across effortless for Fib, homespun together like an intricate spiderweb of sounds they were simply designed to emit. Dulgarian’s point about them being “completely unique” is validated by how hard it is to compare them to other bands. The only reference that came to mind is the New Orleans duo, Caddywhompus, who are only a match in their similarly frenetic, take-you-anywhere energy, complex time changes, and turn-on-a-dime maneuvers that Fib have mastered. That’s likely where the lifting work comes in; memorizing the angular patterns and calculated jumpiness combined with a swirling warped sound that makes Heavy Lifting refreshing and unpredictable.
Their songs contain structural juts and jolts, zigs and zags, and warps and warbles, both sonically and vocally. Their guitar sounds from Cindy and Gage M shimmer warmly with vibrato, alternating between bending lines and staccato rhythmic picking that hits harmonics that dissolve with just enough crunch to keep it punchy and trim. The drums accentuate the movements, pivots, and turns, and Libby Watt drives forward choruses that come to abrupt stops and starts.
Throughout, bassist Logan holds the band together, the wet cement between the guitars and drums. His choices are artistic and empathetic, intuitive to where the songs need to traverse. And when he sits out for a moment or a measure or two, it’s an effective choice. He knows how to create space and seal it up and lift the songs. To say “impressive” is probably passe, but his playing style and contributions are as important to the overall sound of the band as any other instrument or voice.
The nine-song tracklist varies from two to four minutes per song. None feel too short or overstay their welcome and the album flies by in under a half an hour. Woven tightly through consistently sounding tones and levels, it’s extremely well sequenced to keep the charged-up joyride going till it skronks out of gas.
On the album opener “Mutuals,” Libby Watt counts it in on sticks and the band unanimously hooks into a pastoral groove that has bounce from the bass line, interrupted with a driving churn of events. The vocals sit back in the mix and let the instruments shine. There’s a section of the song, a movement, if you will, that rings out clearly: “I want it all, so give it, we all want what we can’t have // you tore it all to pieces, but I can put it all back.” In some ways this describes Fib’s music in a metaphorical sense. There are parts of songs containing fragments that seem like they were forged together in some Dada way.
“Say” keeps the head bopping along. As the shortest song on Heavy Lifting, it slinks open against the upper register of vocalist Gage M’s range, yearning to take off, anchored with another lower voice keeping the foundation of phrasing on solid ground. What becomes evident in this song is how exciting they are as a band. They’ve sequestered the mystery of angular, math-y indie rock that leaves us never knowing what's around the corner, reminding me of early New Wave & post-punk aesthetics.
The third track, “Dotted Line,” has become an earworm with it’s catchy and repititious melodic refrain. It has a bridge section that works on the level of a song within the song and whips along to then return to its original form. This ability to take a detour and charge right back onto the path is where Fib excel.
“You Ruined Everything” and “Right out the Window” take a pop-infused approach to post-punk that Fib have become known for. While there are bleak, hurt, dismal moments in the lyrics, (“to hide behind the awful light of day” and “bully for the hearts martyred in the dark”), they’re coated with a shellac of “it’s gonna be alright” attitude in the tunes. The latter track crossfades into an aural portrayal of something drifting off, like an object from the dashboard sucked out an open window of a moving car. But there’s no going back.
“PS” picks right back up into a lightness of being. It’s part of what garnered so much attention in anticipation of the quartet’s sophomore release. As written up in a Fuzzy Meadows feature by Matt Watton when the second advance single dropped, the “brutish bassline railroads the tempo and the song devolves into a skitterish post-punk exercise. Fib avoids the hackneyed and the gimmicky while staying fun and unexpected.”
“Pictures” and “Real Heat” showcase how the band juxtaposes jangle and an affection for shoegaze with the headstrong restraint to never just show off the tech behind the tone. Cindy pairs his guitar parts with Gage M’s so adeptly, it sometimes feels like a fencing match, and at other times it’s like they’re in lockstep dodging and thrusting together against an invisible foe.
“Outro” has the band sonically brushing up against their past and resurfacing some of the tones of their self-titled debut. It’s more aggressive, dissonant, and noisy, until the album winds down its searing post-punk pop with a few twangs on the strings where they are taut above the neck or below the bridge, ringing out and reverberating almost as if to let the brain catch up on what amounts to a whirlwind experience. This could be a reference to their live shows, where they have been known to keep it tight until the end and then go hog wild. According to Dulgarian, “if you have ever seen Fib live you can attest to the fact that it’s one of the most insane experiences possible. I can’t quite explain it and that feels good to know that I can’t. You have to witness it for yourself.”