‘honey’ by fat dads: sweet and sticky, through and through

by brooke and aura

In their first single of 2024, Carlisle’s Fat Dads have collected nectar of the surfy and bluesy varieties and rendered ‘Honey’, a tune every bit as sweet and sticky as it sounds. And what’s not to love about a song that brings to mind the sounds of the early Beatles and the Beach Boys?

Featuring a simple, immediately retainable chorus that will be stuck on you like honey, one can easily picture live crowds gleefully chanting along on any of the Dads’ remaining tour stops. Lyrically sparse though it may be, it captures the sweetness of infatuation and the repeated refrain cleverly conveys the obsessive distraction of a lovelorn, one-track mind. “I can’t seem to focus cause you’re stuck in my head.” 

We’re fans of the aural effect at the beginning, with the sound volleying back and forth from right to left, with different instruments on either side. You’ll want to wear headphones for the full effect here. Then there’s the distinctive downward progression on the piano partway through, of the sort used in old timey black and white movies to illustrate that something was tedious or repetitive. Nice touch!

Another fun element is the unexpected ending. The wind-down has you all queued up for a crash, but it never comes. It’s a cliffhanger that leaves you wanting more, but not in the irksome way of those rage videos that cut off right before the moment of satisfaction (sorry, was that a too “chronically online” reference?). The wide open sign off is as if the song is saying “to be continued”. We can’t say for sure if that was an intentional choice, but we do know that if there is more to come in this story, we’ll certainly be tuning in for the next chapter.

---