Flobots Fight With Tools

"We're trying to create a holistic, sustainable model with our musicianship," he adds. "We want to walk the talk. I think a lot of what we respond to in hip-hop is what it does with the community. It's easy to have that rhetoric of positivity, where we're like, 'Hey, yo! Everybody be positive.' But we want to go past that, where people who are in the community see us visibly there. Our commitment to service is a core value of the band. We're trying to do whatever we can do to make music a full-time, sustainable gig, where we're sustaining ourselves and our community through our music and our message."

That message comes through loud and clear on Fight With Tools, Flobots' new album. Taking its title from a WWII propaganda poster, Tools finds the act pleading for an awakening with salvos like "There's a War Going on for Your Mind," "Mayday!!!" and "Stand Up." Despite at times seeming like a dystopian mash-up of Rage Against the Machine politics filtered through 311's sound system, the well-worn approach sounds fresh, thanks to Roberts's exceptional viola playing and Laurie's engaging rhymes and forceful cadence, perfectly augmented by Brackett's verses.

Matt Walker

Flobots' Jonny 5: I can lead a nation with a microphone.

Details

CD-release show, with Dualistics and Nathan & Stephen, 7 p.m. Friday, September 21, Gothic Theatre, 3263 South Broadway, $8-$10, 16+, 303-830-8497.

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More About

• Jamie Laurie
• Stephen Brackett
• Flobots
• Andy Guerrero
• Hip-Hop and Rap

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"I think our relationship in the band is very intimate, because it's also a friendship," Laurie explains. "So growth within the band is also growth of our friendship. I don't feel like there's a separate time where it's like friend time and then here we have band time. In the rehearsal space, a lot of times we're just playing around. Yesterday we were pretending to be video-game characters and walking into walls."

"The nerd stuff doesn't change," Brackett concludes. "Doesn't matter how many people come to your shows."