We live in a time of hyper political correctness, where anyone who crosses the line of good taste is liable to be publicly shamed.
But for all its positive intentions, this tendency often serves to silence people. UK rock band Fat White Family, however, aren’t tiptoeing around. Their latest record, Songs For Our Mothers, explores a range of sensitive subject matter. For instance, ‘Satisfied’ compares holocaust survivor Primo Levi’s desperate plight with oral sex; ‘Hits Hits Hits’ is a left-field take on Ike Turner’s physical assaults of his wife Tina; and ‘Tinfoil Deathstar’ looks at escapism via heroin addiction.
Songs For Our Mothers isn’t an aggressive listening experience, mind you. For the most part, a less engaged listener could just dig the warped garagey post-punk sounds without noticing the lyrical concerns. None of the songwriting is especially unconventional either, and songs like ‘Whitest Boy On The Beach’ and ‘Satisfied’ are immediately ear-catching and melodious.
“I want to make pop music sometimes,” says guitarist and chief songwriter Saul Adamczewski. “I think ‘Hits Hits Hits’is a pop song. I’m a bit out of touch with the mainstream, but that’s as close to pop as we’ve ever got. I wanted that to sound like Hot Chocolate.”
The album was recorded with Sean Lennon in Upstate New York, and in terms of production and songcraft, it’s a development from the band’s last LP, Champagne Holocaust. That said, the whole thing possesses a druggy haze – the sound is very woozy and a bit blurry. “I actually wanted it to be quite a challenging listen,” says Adamczewski. “Some of the songs, anyway. I wanted the music to suit the lyrics. So songs like ‘Duce’, I wanted them to have that grandiose, fascistic sound, but also at the same time have the twisted, distorted and horrible sound, which is the musical equivalent of fascism.”
‘Duce’ is the most challenging song of the lot, in which vocalist Lias Saoudi spends the track’s sinister seven minutes rambling about Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini. However, the vocals are drowned in effects and buried deep in the arrangement, making it necessary to strain in order to identify the lyrics. The same can be said about the record as a whole.
“To some degree I wish we’d eased off the reverb and delays just a little bit,” Adamczewski says. “But that’s the thing – for me it’s all about the sound and for Lias it’s all about the lyrics. I feel like I did Lias a bit of a misservice by burying his words in effects that then rendered them impossible to understand. But that’s why we wrote them all out on the poster.”
Songs For Our Mothers covers a range of genres, from Krautrock and garage blues to loopy Syd Barrett folk-psych, glam rock, and even a grotesque waltz. But despite this diversity, it all sounds at least somewhat familiar.
“Most of the band can’t really play their instruments, so there’s a naivety to the way we play,” Adamczewski says. “I’ve always found things like weird time signatures a bit irritating. I’m quite simple-minded like that – I like the basic verse/chorus kind of structure. I like to twist that a little bit and distort it a little bit, but essentially that’s what I like. I’m not trying to be in Slint or anything like that.”
It should be said that nothing on Songs For Our Mothers sounds like an out and out rip-off. The record upholds a sinister and disconcertingly tongue-in-cheek personality, separating Fat White Family from many of their peers.
“Because so many other bands these days are devoid of any kind of charisma or character whatsoever, when there is a band that sound like a bunch of human beings with ideas, it actually seems to be something that people want to talk about,” says Adamczewski. “It’s not so much a compliment to us – more a damnation on everyone else.”
In this context, Fat White Family can be seen as a group of antagonisers trying to some inject life back into rock music, no matter how filthy or lurid. But in assuming this role, is there a greater social agenda? Do they think rock music should go beyond the realm of entertainment and contribute a critical perspective on society?
“I don’t think rock music should do anything. I just think it’s a shame that it doesn’t,” Adamczewski says. “I think that there are plenty of bands that are saying things, plenty of bands with great ideas, plenty of bands who are making interesting music with charisma and character and personality. But it’s the male-run, middle-aged music industry that’s worried about the fact that they’re dying a slow death that is keeping things safe – and therefore killing themselves at the same time.”
Fat White Family will be fighting rock’n’roll’s extinction when they’re in Australia for this year’s Splendour In The Grass, plus a bunch of sideshows. For anyone looking to attune themselves to the band’s mentality, Adamczewski has some advice.
“I would do a speed ball and then I would meditate and then I would have some raki and then I would hold hands with your mum.”
[Fat White Family photo by Roger Sargent]
Songs For Our Mothers is out now through Without Consent; and Fat White Family playSplendour In The Grass, North Byron Parklands, Friday July 22 – Sunday July 24, and Oxford Art Factory on Saturday July 23.
