In Focus: Fat White Family
The band of brothers have had an exciting start to 2021
Photo: Sarah Piantadosi
I just turned off my tv after watching Moonbathing In February (2021), a short documentary by director Niall Trask. I thought that scattered footage of members of Fat White Family coming out with new music while wandering around Hastings and moon bathing in their underwear as magic mushrooms make their way through their digestive system would have given me more insights into the band’s environment. At least, enough to write this.
It did.
They do folk music. Too late for that? Not if you spice it with literally anything that you can imagine, to outrage and offend anyone that you know – what a bliss.
Now, play is it raining in your mouth? from Champagne Holocaust (2013).
In a loop. Don’t you play it in front of your mom and dad — or do.
Wallow in anticipation of the final delirium:
“Hell hath no fury like a failed artist / Or a successful communist / But that ain’t no excuse to treat my purple fury / Quite like a big black abyss [..] Five sweaty fingers on my dashboard / Five sweaty fingers with a criminal impatience / Five sweaty fingers down on my dashboard.”
It is 2011, Peckham is cool (for real), and Fat White Family is born.
The core of the whole ordeal is formed by Saul Adamczewski (lead guitarist), whose description by many different sources taught me the beautiful word mercurial, and the Saoudi brothers: Lias, the cavernous voiced lyricist and official shit-stirrer of the band, and Nathan, the caustic keyboardist and psychedelic ranger.
In the squat they share above a pub, they have a blast, or a nightmare, or both. The result is Champagne Holocaust. Yes, the album may sound cheap. Yes, it may be excessive and crude. And yes, sometimes the lyrics are buried under a wall of fuzzy sounds. That’s it. Great album. I read a review that said otherwise, and I reported it as fake news. No regrets.
Play the album on a loop for a couple of days, then we will talk — if you can still feel your lips.
“Is there life behind the neutral zone? / I'm talking about neutron, baby.”(Auto Neutron, Champagne Holocaust – 2013)
The answer is: I don’t know, but there is Life Beyond the Neutral Zone, a series of letters and essays masterfully written by Lias Saoudi. My personal favourite being #8.
“What are all the little boys afraid of?”(These Hands, Champagne Holocaust Deluxe Edition – 2013)
The answer is probably Saul Adamczewski, and his side project Fat White Manson Family, whose output is completely available on youtube and earned them a kindly declined invitation to play in Spahn Ranch. The only cover band that matters.
Champagne Holocaust, initially released on Bandcamp, makes them notorious, and people like me end up listening to it on loop for days.
Word of mouth spreads the news: there is a new band in town, a family, and they are savage. I said they do folk; someone might argue it is post-punk-experimental-hybrid-fusion-Asian-ballad-with a hint of bells. I agree. I don’t like arguing.
In 2014 they played the epic South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, thanks to a PledgeMusic campaign, where pledgers got FWF self-released EP Crippled B-sides And Inconsequential Rarities (2014). In the same year, they hit Glastonbury, a beautifully grotesque sight for glittered eyes.
Champagne Holocaust has been playing in my ears nonstop for two days now.
I think that I might need help.
“999? Yes, I know this is not as important as a shortage of chicken at KFC, but…”
The doctor on the other side of the phone suggested moving to their second album, Songs For Our Mothers (2016).
“We gave birth to electric life / It took seven hours but it came out right.”(We Must Learn To Rise, Songs For Our Mothers – 2016)
The opening single Whitest Boy On The Beach is chosen for the closing credits of T2 TRAINSPOTTING 2 and makes it clear: nothing is clear.
Photo: Michael Lee Jamison
Floating choirs of benevolent Saoudi and Family see through hammering synths and mangrovial guitars. New directions on old vehicles. A whole further use of synths to deliver a message of hope and offence. New feuds. They love feuds. Feuds with IDLES, with Mac DeMarco, with Wolf Alice, with Sleaford Mods, with Idles again, with seafood, with meat, hot feuds, cold feuds, feuds for everyone. Count to ten and hug at the end of the fight.
“Everyone thinks we’re complete c***s [..] I’ve bumped into people we’ve rinsed. They turn out to be lovely.”
Self-contradictory? Yes, of course. What have you been reading so far?
Glasto 2015 is not ready for them, but was it ever? Oh, sorry! We were talking about 2016.
I must have gotten confused by the angriest of their albums, Songs For Our Mothers (2016). A pleasant afternoon of sultry, hot sweat, spent on a couch staring into the depths of your ceiling. Immobile for 46 minutes and 19 seconds. Are you afraid yet? You will be.
“Goodbye Goebbels / Sometimes there's no solving.”(Goodbye Goebbels, Songs For Our Mothers - 2016)
Listening to this album is tantamount to watching someone fighting in a cage where no rules apply: you are very intrigued, shocked, and excited, and you are truly glad it is not you doing it. Rejuvenating at someone else’s expense.
Songs For Our Mothers splits them. The Family gets thin.
Now, take a big breath because we are going through two very turbulent years.
Beautiful decadence, the material for folk tales and rebellious kids. Horrible reflections appear in their mirrors at the end of the night when dawn shows you who you truly are, and what has been seen cannot be unseen. Side projects are formed. Promises of cleansings. Oats of self-destruction. Lias and Saul join Eccentronic Research Council’s Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer to form Moonlandigz. Saul joins schoolmate Ben Romans-Hopcraft and forms Insecure Men – Sean Lennon is in the mix too. Saul moves to Paris, and Lias and Nathan go to Sheffield. Two years of confusion come to their peak with their third album: SERF UP! (2019).
In the words of Ed Power from the Irish Times: “[It] feels like a pop album you might slap on as the world is about to end or you’ve just learned Brexit has been pushed back to 2020.”
“Eat that mighty apple / Crawl across the ceiling / Force feed her a bundle / Dr. Johnson’s got the feeling.”(Fringe Runner, Serf Up! – 2019)
Yet, another shade of fat white. A multitude of sounds are in charge of soothing your soul while lyrics sneak in through the backdoor and cut you in your sleep. You wake up and scream, “Who’s there?!” and a deep voice suggests…
“Tonight we're going to eat rockfishes.”(Rock Fishes, Serf Up! – 2019)
A triple punch hit the release: A gloomy, sexy short war film directed by CC Wade promoting the single Feet:
An ode to druidism in a Sussex forest, directed by Fiona Godivier, for When I Leave:
And a Monty Python inspired absurd romp for Tastes Good With The Money, directed by Róisín Murphy.
God forbid Glastonbury 2019 is readier for Fat White Family than its predecessors, so Lias chooses to do some crowd-surfing while singing, “I hope your children wash up bloated on my shore Caucasians sashimi in a sand n***a storm.”
Any questions? He explains the use of this ‘term’ here.
With Covid hitting the shores of the so-called human civilisation, it seems only natural that Fat White Family find their original way to cope.
Lias initially tries to film a shot-by-shot remake of The Shawshank Redemption (1994) with Pregoblin’s Alex Selby, but eventually settles for a retreat in Hastings, in February 2021, with brother Nathan, and the Family’s multi-instrumentalist Alex White. Here, director Niall Trask films them cooking, writing new music, playing in toilets, and moon bathing.
The response to the film is such that the Family decides to hit the road for a promotional-socially-distanced mini-tour.
Are they back? Not yet, but (hopefully) soon.
As I am writing this, I received a text message from a good friend of mine:
‘Thanks to you, I was able to say “yes” when last night my date asked if I knew of a band called Fat White Family.’
You are welcome, all of you.
