Review: Fast Food Fairies – “The Greasy Sessions EP”

Self-released, August 9, 2020

Fast Food Fairies dig the Ramones.  Maybe you should, too.

Fast Food Fairies come from Montreal, Quebec, but they sound like they could’ve walked the streets of Queens, New York without getting hassled.  Their newest release, The Greasy Sessions EP, kicks out three new songs, their first new stuff since 2018’s debut Food For Fairies EP.    

At only three songs, The Greasy Sessions doesn’t mess around.  They do three songs in killer Ramones style, each of them good and fun.  Opener “I Wanna Be With You” has some basic kicking drums and cool rolling bass from the start.  Then guitars pop up and give off a bit of an “I Wanna Be Sedated” vibe, with cool Joey Ramone-meets-Rev Norb (Boris The Sprinkler) vocal hooks and some fun harmonies and melodies.  Then they go and throw a sort of rock and roll guitar lead onto the bridge that seems to come from The Dickies playbook.  It’s a really fun song that works for me.  The follow-up, “She Don’t Know I Love Her So (And I’m Afraid To Let Her Know)”, does more of the Ramones stuff with a 1-2-3-4 count-in and vocals that remind me even more of Joey.  This one’s got a great melody on the “I’m afraid to let her know” part and is a great simple singalong.  And the closer, “Barbra”, is maybe my favorite.  It’s a catchy pop punk number with a fun “b-a-r-b-r-a” spell-out singalong, simple buzzing rhythm guitars, and another Dickies-like guitar lead.  I can’t get it out of my brain.

I keep going back and listening to The Greasy Sessions 7 minutes over and over again.  It’s nothing rewriting any playbook.  Really, it’s nothing original much at all.  It’s just good.  There’s no such thing as too much of this stuff as long as the songs are fun.