Review: Fat Freddy's Drop at Bruce Mason Theatre

Fat Freddy's Drop brought old and new to the Bruce Mason Theatre in Takapuna last night. Photo / Supplied

Back before their studio hits were blasted from every Kiwi backyard barbecue, Fat Freddy's Drop would pack ardent fans into Wellington hovels and have them riding the waves of their spine-tingling, mesmerising electronica and reggae.

The success of their 2005 studio debut, Based On A True Story, gave them licence to take on the world, bump up the price of their tickets ($55 for this weekend's concerts) and pick up a mainstream following - people of all ages were at last night's show and there didn't appear to be a dreadlock in sight.

This week's six-stop theatre tour is a chance for the Wellington eight-piece (or 10 with the back-up singers) to get back to their jam-style, improvised live performance roots, and to revisit their old material - they opened with the swaggering harmonica hit Rain from their first album, Live at the Matterhorn, and brought the second half to a crescendo with Seconds.

Those had the audience pulsing, but it was also a chance to test some new Fat Freddy's songs, like the energetic, disco-funk track Afrique.

If that fizzing fusion of house, Balkan folk and disco-funk was anything to go by, their imminent release is going to be quite the rebranding, in a back-to-the-future kind of way.

Last night's show was a far cry from the recent free stints that had university quads shrouded in a green haze of sleepiness.

From the knee-popping new track Blackbird, to the sing-along 2005 hit Cay's Cray's, to the oh-so-nostalgic solo ballad Ground My Ego from frontman Dallas Tamaira's Bongmaster days, to the roaring encore Midnight Marauders, it was the tingling performance we have been itching for - only so much more civilised than we remember (there was even an intermission).

In the words of Tamaira, "chur fullas".