On 2018’s “Springtime and Blind” and 2021’s “Between the Richness”, Pat Flynn, singer of Massachusetts post-hardcore band Fiddlehead, brandished his grief as a badge of honour. With a voice both melodic and strident, his role in the band has been to make sense of his feelings, of which there are many; those of immense loss set into motion by his father passing in 2010; the unbridled joy at the birth of his kids; the influence and responsibility of working with young minds as a high school history teacher. Fiddlehead’s ardent third album “Death Is Nothing to Us” finds the singer at a crossroads with grief and wrestling with facets of denial and perseverance, his voice reaching for resolve within a tracklist of relentless and poignant punk rock.
The husband and father of two makes clear that he didn’t intend to make a thematic trilogy. “It was totally organic, coincidental—no long-term plan there,” he says, speaking in a clear and concise tone that I could best describe as “teacher-voice.” This clarification followed a series of quotidian domestic events: he left the sprinkler on all night in the yard, his mother called to ask for help moving out of her office, his toddler barged into the room to say hello. The core of his impetus as a writer is summed up in this duality: the wholesome stability of his family life and the ambience of death that’s coated his understanding of existence from a young age.
On the verge of Fiddlehead’s newest release, “Death Is Nothing to Us”. out August 18th, 2023 via Run For Cover Records
The Fat Angel Sings 