Shot on location at the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, ‘The Suit That Won’t Come Off’ was directed by acclaimed 18-year-old filmmaker Freddy Macdonald – his third collaboration with Fantastic Negrito following ‘The Duffler’ (shot on location at the Baden Blues Festival in Switzerland) and ‘A Boy Named Andrew’ (filmed at various locations in Milan, Italy). In addition, ‘The Suit That Won’t Come Off’ further showcases the remarkable work of dancer Odil Gerfaut and choreographer Angele Carole Chappuis, both of whom are visually handicapped.
Fantastic Negrito has also teamed up with the Braille Institute to raise money for their organization – you can donate HERE.
“Our freedom comes when we face our fear,” says Fantastic Negrito. “It comes when we embrace and celebrate what makes us unique. We grew up feeling like outsiders; a lost tribe. Sometimes isolated or ashamed about what was unique about us. We could not fit into society’s repressed fantasies of how the world should look, how it should be. This song is for everyone that ever felt left out, not good enough, imperfect, ridiculed for being different a freak. I am you, you are me, we are we -- A tribe with love in our hearts.”
Long hailed for his electrifying live performances (watch ‘Plastic Hamburgers’ live on Jools Holland here), this weekend also sees Fantastic Negrito playing Glastonbury Festival ahead of further live highlights, which includes Lollapalooza (August 1-4) and a return to the UK for Greenbelt Festival (August 24).
Fantastic Negrito will also be playing a host of many more headline shows and festivals dates across Europe and the US. For ticket information, please visit fantasticnegrito.com/pages/tour.
FANTASTIC NEGRITO ON TOUR 2019
AUGUST
1-4 – Lollapalooza – Chicago, IL *
3 – Lincoln Hall (Lollapalooza Aftershow) –
Chicago, IL
22 – Teatro Ibiza – Ibiza, Spain
24 – Greenbelt Festival – Kettering, United
Kingdom *
* FESTIVAL PERFORMANCE
FANTASTICNEGRITO.COM
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‘The Suit That Won’t Come Off’ is a yet another powerful song off of Fantastic Negrito’s GRAMMY®-winning second album, PLEASE DON’T BE DEAD. The expanded edition of the 2018 LP Is available now for streaming and download via Cooking Vinyl and Blackball Universe.
Recently named ‘Best Blues Album’ at the Libera Awards, celebrating independent music and artists, PLEASE DON’T BE DEAD undoubtedly ranked among last year’s most important releases, with NPR’s Bob Boilen presciently declaring, “Fantastic Negrito won a GRAMMY® for the ‘Best Contemporary Blues Album’ for 2016’s LAST DAYS OF OAKLAND. PLEASE DON’T BE DEAD, with its intense fervor, should make that two years in a row.”
The New York Times’ Jon Pareles hailed the album as “a cranked-up, slow-grinding attack on addiction and consumerism,” while the Associated Press wrote, “Negrito puts himself in the middle of the fray with PLEASE DON’T BE DEAD, and offers his songs for the soundtrack of the lives of those who won’t give up and are willing to carry on.”
“Echoes of Zeppelin, The Black Keys, and Jack White are as prevalent as those of Leadbelly or Son House,” applauded Glide Magazine. “And, like the jazz artists mentioned, urban aspects of hip-hop, rap, and spoken word filter through as does R&B.”
Perhaps Entertainment Weekly said it best: “When you’ve been a small-time drug hustler, experienced a brush with death, a false start as a major label artist, and life as a busker, you’re well-positioned to sing the blues - as Fantastic Negrito does on his incendiary, consciousness-raising new album.”
Along with ‘The Suit That Won’t Come Off’, PLEASE DON’T BE DEAD includes the extraordinary singles, ‘Plastic Hamburgers’, ‘A Boy Named Andrew’, and ‘The Duffler’, the latter of which earned fulsome praise from Rolling Stone, “With its greasy guitar stomp and falsetto vocal delivery, ‘The Duffler’ fills the middle ground between modern protest music for the political rally and sweaty, sexed-up baby-making music for the bedroom.”
Fantastic Negrito has spent much of the past two years on the road, including sold out headline shows, stage-stealing festival performances, and a series on North American and European tours supporting his great fan, the late Chris Cornell, as well as Cornell’s legendary supergroup Temple of the Dog.
2018 saw major market headline shows (such as the PLEASE DON’T BE DEAD release event at San Francisco’s historic Fillmore), dates supporting Sturgill Simpson, sets at such festivals as Arroyo Seco Weekend, Newport Folk Festival, and AFROPUNK FEST, and a spectacular full band performance and interview on CBS This Morning: Saturday, streaming HERE.
ACCLAIM FOR PLEASE DON’T BE DEAD
'A descendant of ‘What's Going On’, delivered by a resilient
Hendrix-style dandy'
Mojo
"... James Brown updated for the Black Lives Matter era"
Uncut
“Genre-mashing modern blues at its very best”
Classic Rock
“…carefully crafted to
provoke some much needed conversations”
Wire
“Addressing subjects from
addiction and gun crime to censorship and obscene over-consumption, the anger
is righteous but leavened with the hope of change.”
Uncut
"Over a series of heaving,
stomping riffs, it's a cranked-up, slow-grinding attack on addiction and
consumerism with a chant-along chorus: "Let's break out these chains/Let's
burn it down."
New York Times
"…fills the middle
ground between modern protest music for the political rally and sweaty,
sexed-up baby-making music for the bedroom."
Rolling Stone
