Party: The Fat White Family // Plug Sheffield // 22.02.16

Party: The Fat White Family // Plug Sheffield // 22.02.16

Some people will call Songs For Our Mothers the most unpleasant album of this year, if not of their entire generation; the work of a bunch of drink and drug wracked nihilist degenerates. Some will say that it is a thrilling statement of disgust, defiance and complete creative independence made by the only rock band in the UK that really counts for anything at all anymore. But it is likely that few who hear it will walk away from the second album by the Fat White Family, released on their own label Without Consent, not caring one way or the other.

Some will hail this hair-raising, pulse-quickening and indignant collection of glitterball disco, smacked out psych, glam funk, heart-breaking torch songs and otherworldly slabs of Kraut n’
western as the shot in the arm that independent rock has been ailing after. And a shot in the arm is exactly what this album is. For if modern indie rock, DIY, alt-country - call it what you will - is sick, then the Fat Whites are the pretty nurse with Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy, pushing down the plunger on the syringe; murdering the bed-ridden patient with a
tainted injection right under everyone’s noses. They have witnessed an entire musical scene teetering on the verge of terminal irrelevancy and given it a hard shove void-wards.

And the dark irony is that physically, mentally and psychically the band nearly disintegrated themselves long before they got chance to deliver the goods. After working so hard on the band for so long, when it looked like their time was finally here, frontman Lias had no intention of letting three serious illnesses one after another stop them from having their
moment. “I had pneumonia and was coughing up blood at one point… I thought I was done for”, he says, “It was a result of snorting and drinking every day and living at the Queens [their one time Brixton pub HQ] but then instead of recuperating going out on a really long tour and ending up in a really bad way.”

And no wonder some of this sickness and deathliness has saturated the new album. Those looking for dark, subversive, thrilling, transgressive (and sometimes satirical) art that unwaveringly holds a mirror up to the morally blank times we live in will find what they want in the Songs For Our Mothers; just as those who revel in being offended will do likewise.
It’s hard not to wonder - especially when you look at some of the song titles (Love Is The Crack? Goodbye Goebels? Leibensraum? When Shipman Decides?! Hoooo boy: they’ve pushed the boat out this time!) - if the band are just handing ammunition to perma-outraged liberal detractors who will inevitably call them fascists, advocates of hard drug use, serial killer fanboys (among many other things) instead of looking for deeper meaning.

Lead singer and lyric writer Lias Saoudi grins: “Yeah, and we’re handing them the ammunition gladly… because people who get up in the morning to look for Nazis end up seeing them everywhere by lunchtime.”

Lead guitarist and music writer Saul Adamczewski is deadly serious when he adds: “I think what I learned from our debut Champagne Holocaust is that if you were going to listen to all of your online critics it would pretty much be impossible to do anything other than toe the line completely and make the most conservative music imaginable. We’ve already been called fascists. We’ve already been called Stalinists.... So what do we actually care? And besides, these are the best questions to ask and the best scenarios to explore. Who cares about the artistic potential of singing about good people and good situations?”

Before Lias adds laughing: “So we just thought we might as well crank it up to 11.” But if the album nearly didn’t happen because of illness, it also nearly didn’t happen because of Saul and Lias’ obsessional idea of what the band should sound like. Scores and scores of songs were scrapped and several recording sessions were abandoned because the music