Lias Saoudi – Fat White Family – Brussels 2016 – Photo by Turn Up The Volume
Notorious British post-punk dropoutsFAT WHITE FAMILY with one permanent
member throughout their journey, the high-octane frontman and lyricist Lias Saoudi
who becomes an obsessed man on a mission when he sets foot on a stage, and who’s
also involved in other projects (The Moonlandingz / Decius) run amok, forth and back, for
15 years now.
In their drugs-infused, turbulent existence they have, so far, released 5 LPs,
the newest a jawdropping live one, called Konk If You’re Lonely.
But here we go back to a moment in 2015, playing their 2014 haymaker I AM MARK E. SMITH, which shows why the Family is one of the best live
bands of this Century. Fact!
Who: Notorious British crackpots, fronted by singer/lyricist Lias Saoudi,
along with guitarist Adam J Harmer the only two permanent members
over the years. Their musical architect Saul Adamczewski left last year,
for the umpteenth time.
To my ears and eyes, one of the best bands, on stage and on record, of the
past two decades. So far they have released 4 LPs, with Forgiveness Is Yours,
which came out last year, as their most challenging opus. A mindbending mix
of psychedelic pop-rock-punk extravaganza.
Fast-forward.
Nick Cave, Cypress Hill, Queens Of The Stone Age and Björk, all had notable live
albums out this year, but except for Iggy Pop’s Live At Montreux Jazz Festival
double LP, misfits Fat White Family had no competition whatsoever with their
own bone-chilling KONK IF YOU’RE LONELY exploit.
The album’s front cover features guitarist Adam J Harmer.
No idea what they want to express with it. As usual, only
the band knows (I guess).
Lias Saoudi – FWF in Antwerp, Belgium 2024 – Photo by Turn Up The Volume
You get a mix of capricious highlights of their
past 4 longplayers. No suckers, all fuckers.
Saoudi dominates this stonk-er of an album all the way. The most demonic
frontman of the 21st Century backed by an ever-changing lineup, but always
an awe-striking band. He sounds as if he’s an exorcist who wants to exorcise
himself. His creepy howls make your hair in the back of your neck stand up.
Petrifying and stupefying. Nobody can touch him.
We’re on our way, slowly but surely, to the end of 2025.
Instead of starting to think about this year’s best LPs,
let’s go back to 2024 and listen to TUTV’s 20 Best Albums
again and look back on what we wrote about each one
of them.
Lias Saoudi (voice/face/wordsmith/poet/writer): ‘Forgiveness Is Yours,’ is about life as eternal
contingency, about no longer suspecting, but knowing that this shit will never get any easier… in fact, it’s about to get a whole lot worse, your body’s going to go into decay and the people you love will slowly start dropping dead around you.
But somehow, you’ve smashed enough of your expectations thus far in life, you’re sort of fine with it… you accept it.The overarching aesthetic themes at work here are torpor and further torpor still.”
TUTV: Without a shadow of a doubt, their most startling and most creative/inventive accomplishment. Sounds like FWF have written/recorded the bone-chilling soundtrack
for an entertaining Doomsday party.
Enigmatic reflections, dark deliberations, distressing vibes, a John Lennon tribute and Saoudi as the foreboding messenger and sinister poet in the middle of it all. It’s the end
of the world, as we know it, and it feels like Fat White Family.
Orchestrator Robert Smith about
their supreme new opus.
TUTV: In the past 16 years Robert Smith lost his mother, father, and brother.
All these painful events led to this extraordinarily touching record. It’s one
long, emotionally layered lament that works liberating in the end.
Strong sentiments of heartache, grief, and sadness are omnipresent, but you
hear and feel frequently that Smith has accepted humankind’s inevitable destiny.
Live and die. Life and death.
Sonically, it feels like if you’re part of a funeral march that progresses in slow
motion. Almost every song starts with a long instrumental intro of waves of
mourning synths and weeping guitars, and every time when Smith‘s feverish
voice joins in, the sense of tristesse augments wondrously heavy-hearted.
5-star masterpiece!
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. Instagram – All Albums
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TUTV: Musically, tattoo artist Carter and his accomplices have left their angry punk days behind them and moved closer to classic rock on this surprising and bold longplayer.
And it’s a truly staggering result with several melodramatic power ballads that generate goosebumps, and some stoner rock ebullitions to keep balance. Carter sings his heart out with monumental vivaciousness. A vocal tour de force throughout, dealing with up and down emotions.
Lias Saoudi (voice/face/wordsmith/poet/writer): ‘Forgiveness Is Yours,’ is about life as eternal contingency… about no longer suspecting, but knowing that this shit will never get any easier… in fact, it’s about to get a whole lot worse, your body’s going to go into decay and the people you love will slowly start dropping dead around you… but somehow, you’ve smashed enough
of your expectations thus far in life, you’re sort of fine with it… you accept it.The overarching aesthetic themes at work here are torpor and further torpor still.”
TUTV: Without a shadow of a doubt their most startling, and most creative/inventive accomplishment. Sounds like FWF have written/recorded the bone-chilling soundtrack
for an entertaining Doomsday party. Enigmatic reflections, dark deliberations, distressing vibes, a John Lennon tribute and Saoudi as the foreboding messenger and sinister poet in the middle of it all. It’s the end of the world, as we know it, and it feels like Fat White Family.
Cave: “There’s no fucking around with this record. When it hits, it hits. It lifts you. It moves
you. I love that about it. I hope the album has the effect on listeners that it’s had on me. It bursts out of the speaker, and I get swept up with it.”
TUTV: Cave is the God of cloak-and-dagger balladry. Now here’s a God I can believe in. Again he shows why he’s one of the best ever crooners in the universe. And lyrically it
feels as if, after so many devastating, heart-crushing years, with the loss of two sons,
he lets sparks of light back in his life. God bless Nick Cave.
TUTV: White returns to his punk blues roots of the early days. Swipe after swipe,
blue stripe after blue stripe, kick after kick, clap after clap. A total of 13 thunder
strokes. High-wired electricity. Dope stuff.
TUTV: The charismatic Lia Metcalfe‘s singular voice, both anxious and bewitching,
is all over this new, awe-inspiring full-length. Overall the sound is even more gloomy
and spine-chilling than on their debut from 2022.
It fits Metcalfe‘s introspective reflections on her turbulent past terrifically well.
They’re embedded in arresting songs that send shivers down your spine.
But, eventually, there’s a light shining
at the end of the Mysterines tunnel.
One that illuminates their future
and your stereo.
TUTV: The star duo made an album with lots of bright pop tunes and some blues light
ones. The licks/riffs and hooks – about a thousand – haven’t that BK’s raw and rough edge as we are used to, but I don’t miss it whatsoever.
The overall sonority leans more towards power guitar pop (slow, mid-tempo and only
a couple of fast ones). I never thought that the tandem would come up after 23 (!) years with a pretty different sounding, coherent longplayer, without ignoring their blues roots that is. I played Ohio Players more than their whole catalog together. Say no more.
TUTV: The three main elements that make this album special are Jeen’s remarkable
voice, her high-quality songwriting expertise, and the heart-and-soul passion that streams throughout it. Whether Jeen rocks out, muses, or swings moods, she always holds your aural attention.
TUTV: With Interplay their shoegaze past goes into the dustbin. Ride came up here
with a multi-layered pop LP stuffed with arousing tunes, alternated with pepped-up reveries.
All songs are sublimely orchestrated and bathe in a psychedelic jacuzzi,
while vocalist Mark Gardner‘s velvet vocals match the radiant atmosphere
exquisitely. It’s a new ride, and it’s a gratifying one.
TUTV: This first Mancunian collabortion sounds as if was made about 30 years ago.
Most tunes could be leftovers from The Stone Roses‘ 2nd and final 1994 LP Second Coming, the one on which Squire played his guitar exactly the way Jimmy Page did in Led Zeppelin for years. And Liam is Liam. Arms together on his back and letting his pipes do the talking. The two heroes just did what they wanted to do, making an album together and having fun doing it.
Before I was aware of it I had played the album about 10 times in 2 days.
Mind you this is not a masterwork whatsoever, but all 10 tunes are top-entertaining
and stick faster than I can say “I want the Stone Roses support Oasis on their reunion tour”?
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. Liam Gallagher – John Squire
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TUTV: The Other Side is a concept record about a “mysterious couple” having
adventures in an otherworldly America. The by-now 76-year-old Burnett translates
their journey in lovey-dovey lullabies, heartfelt musings, and amourus ballads.
This is the perfect record for daydreaming and relaxation. Soft, mellow, and tender.
His slightly hoarse Americana voice enchants and entices all through this sepia-colored album. Pure romanticism. Pure songsmith.
Artist: JUJU (Italy)
Brainchild of Sicilian multi-instrumentalist
and producer Gioele Valenti. Album: Apocalypse Is God’s Spoiler
Photo by Turn Up The Volume
TUTV: Valenti is a jam champ and a groove master creating electrifying, trance-like vibrations that transfer you to the dark side of your mind where you can freely
fantasize and explore your own psyche.
Circling Krautrock-like psychedelia is all over the place. Choir chants and spacey percussion cause a tribal atmosphere à la The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. Mind-bending and dream-triggering. As always.
TUTV: After the turmoil, chaos and drugs addictions (especially Doherty) of the early
years, the side-projects, solo records and getting clean and healthy the Libs are back, again. They’re not the boys in the band of yesteryear, they’re now grown-up men who
enjoy a stable life and still are obsessed by making music.
They became notable, experienced musicians who left their hedonistic lifestyle behind themselves for several years now. Not one dull moment, not one dull song on the eastern esplanade.
TUTV: The Irishmen have become first-class songwriters (which they already proved on previous LP Skinty Fia– – still my favourite one). Frontman Grian Chatten‘s lyrics show (again) his observative view on this modern-day, confused world and how it affects
his inner-self.
This is not their masterpiece yet to my ears, but it’s only a matter of
time that they will come up with a longplayer that will blow us all away.
Turn Up The Volume: Old skool punk ‘n’ roll? Absolutely. Any good? You betcha! Amyl and her loud buddies made another roasting riff-manic-monster of a hell fucking
hell yeah record. Pogo madness is back. Sturm un drang from start to finish. HOLY MOLY!
Band:THE SMILE
Sort of supergroup featuring 2 radioheads, Thom
Yorke and Jonny Greenwood and drummer Tom Skinner.
Album: Cutouts.
Their 3rd LP in just 2 years
(Radiohead 8 in 31 years).
TUTV: By far their best to my ears. On the previous 2 ones they tried too hard
to not sound like Radiohead (which they did frequently anyway) and did it with
too many redundant orchestrations, too many unnecessary layers and a bit of
arty farty structures here and there.
Mind you these are good LPs but on this one they keep it far more simple resulting
in 10 very compelling pieces of mesmerizing music. Trippy fast ones alternate with slow
musing ones and throughout the arrangements are subtle, direct and most entertaining with Thom Yorke sounding, yes, at ease, not forcing his compassionate voice/vocals. Bingo.
TUTV: Nostalgia is the keyword all over this fully devoted record. As we already know
for a long time Hawley is a romantic at heart who’s in love with his city Sheffield since
he was a child. It’s more than just his hometown.
It’s the place where he experienced all things good and bad, happy and sad. It leads
to yearning renumerations, fanciful daydreams and wistful meditations. With his soft-heartened voice and late-night stories, the late great Roy Orbison comes to mind on
several occasions.
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. Instagram – All Albums
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Artists:DEAD ANYWAY British duo combining the dark lyricism of Kate Arnold
against the music and soundscapes of Marc Symonds. Album: Tough, Listen
TUYV: Slow/mid-tempo/fast trip-hop tunes are wrapped in layers of
distortion and feedback, creating an eerie and at times sinister ambiance.
Massive Attack, Tricky, Arab Strap and Mike Skinner’s The Streets
and Laurie Anderson‘s latest opus Amelia come to mind.
DA resonates as EBM for people who come alive when the darkness sets in, far away
from our 24/7 suffocating life and the world’s destructive nature as we experience now, again.
Kate Arnold‘s spoken word stories evolve on waves of chilling synth soundscapes that actually ease one’s confused mind (mine, for sure) and transfer you to your space of imaginativeness. Trance massage it is. You’ll feel alive anyway.
“The singular mixture of classic punk/hardcore and electronic styles result in 12 frantic tracks of postmodern pop for the genreless future. Painted with a broad pallet of only the most extreme hues of emotion, each track is marked by a distinctive danceable mania.”
TUTV: Let your head kicked in with schizophrenic disco sledgehammers for illegal raves in batcaves where dropouts, misfits, loners, eccentrics, bohos, and other related outsiders gather to move in mysterious ways, far away from the normal world.
TUTV: It’s vintage Shellac/Steve Albini with its wayward song structures, its
capricious and minimalistic approach, its broken riffs, edgy hooks, sinewy
drumming, Albini‘s firm vocals and the raw and rough post-punk dynamics.
Absolutely weird to listen to, knowing
that the noise wizard is here no more.
He passed away on May 7, following a heart attack.
Only 10 days before the album release. Sad loss.
Artist: T BONE BURNETT Who: Legendary American songsmith and lauded producer who worked
with many greats (Elvis Costello, Robert Plant, John Mellencamp and many
more) and scored movie soundtracks all through his long career.
LET THE FLOWERS GROW
The song was originally written by Boy George with its initial message being
“one of
personal acceptance about being gay. As the song developed, it took on a more expansive and universal scope with its lyrics extending beyond sexuality and embracing race, gender, creed and religion.”
Epic.
Boy George – Peter Murphy
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Artist: PETER PERRETT Who: Former frontman of legendary British new
wavers The Only Ones (1976–1982, 2007–2017)
“The song incorporates themes of longing and desperation I felt in my own
life at the time that found a home in anecdotes of the desert and its characters
experiencing these feelings for reasons far removed from my reality.”
Artists: THE GLASS HOURS Who: American songwriters Brad Armstrong and Megan Barbera.
Their music blurs between Sunday afternoon country-folk and
the golden age of the 1970s.
“It’s about that someone you’ll never be with and that you allow to remain
inside you as a perfect unspoiled thing, yet still you measure and hold your
real relationship up against it. It’s a dream, an illusion, an unfair fantasy.
Nothing and therefore able to be perfect.”
TUTV said: “With tensely emotive singles Man Of The Hour and Brambles, tattoo artist Carter seemed to let his angry punk days behind him and move towards classic rock.
This album confirms that surprising, bold move.
And it’s a truly staggering record, filled with several melodramatic power ballads that generate goosebumps and some stoner rock ebullitions. Carter sings his heart out with monumental vivaciousness. A vocal tour de force throughout, dealing with mixed love emotions. Dark Rainbow will impact your ears for a very long time.”
Lias Saoudi, voice/face/wordsmith/poet/writer, about the LP: ‘Forgiveness Is Yours,’ is about life as eternal contingency… about no longer suspecting, but knowing that this shit will never get any easier… in fact, it’s about to get a whole lot worse, your body’s going to go into decay and the people you love will slowly start dropping dead around you…but somehow, you’ve smashed enough of your expectations thus far in life, you’re sort of fine with it…you accept it.The overarching aesthetic themes at work here are torpor and further torpor still.”
TUTV: Without a shadow of a doubt their best, most startling, and most inventive accomplishment. Sounds like FWF have written/recorded the bone-chilling soundtrack
for Doomsday. Poignant vibes, ominous reflections, dark ballads, and frontman Lias Saoudi as the foreboding messenger and sinister poet. It’s the end of the world, as we know it, and it feels like Fat White Family.
TUTV said: The star duo made an album with lots of bright pop tunes and some light
blues ones. The licks/riffs and hooks, about a thousand of course, haven’t that BK’s raw
and rough edge as we are used to.
The overall sonority leans more towards power guitar pop (slow, mid-tempo and only
a couple of fast ones). I never thought that the tandem would come up after 23 years (yes, twenty-three years!) with a different sounding, coherent longplayer, without ignoring their blues roots that is. Ohio Players will be the album that I’ll play more than their whole catalogue together.
TUTV said: It sounds as if the two rock stars made this record about 30 years ago when Oasis and The Stone Roses had both a glorious debut LP out. It sounds as if the 10 songs here, didn’t make those masterpiece albums, because they’re somehow lazy tunes. That’s what my ears told me at first. Two famous Manchester lads had some time to kill.
But I’ve played it countless times by now. All tracks are infectious and electrifying. Liam & John didn’t look back in anger and may be adored for this easy-peasy, but oh-so-effective psych-rock-blues longplayer. Touchdown.
TUTV said: The charismatic Lia Metcalfe‘s singular voice, both anxious and soul-stirring,
is all over this awe-inspiring new record. So instrumental for the band’s sound that resonates more poignant, gloomier and spine-chilling than on their debut.
It fits Metcalfe‘s introspective reflections on her turbulent past terrifically well,
with haunting and goosebumps-causing songs that have an imposing impact.
There’s always a light shining at the end of the Mysterines tunnel.
The 4 scousers are ready up for a triumphant future.
TUTV said: The three main elements that make this album special are Jeen’s remarkable
voice, her high-quality songwriting expertise, and the heart-and-soul passion that streams throughout the record. Whether Jeen rocks out, muses, or swings moods, she always holds your aural attention.
The cliché is accurate here, ‘no fillers, all killers’. 10 intoxicating, 10 solid gold songs.
This first-rate longplayer should get at least the same attention as Sheryl Crow‘s
new one.
TUTV said: With Interplay the shoegaze past goes into the dustbin as the present Ride are fabulous. They come up with some terrifically arousing tunes, alternated with pepped-up reveries.
All songs are sublimely orchestrated and bathe in a psychedelic jacuzzi, while vocalist Mark Gardner‘s velvet vocals match the sonic atmosphere exquisitely. Ride have mixed emotions about today’s restless times, me too, but not about this record. Lots of five-star stuff.
TUTV said: It’s vintage Shellac/Steve Albini with its wayward song structures, its
capricious and minimalistic resonance, its broken riffs, edgy hooks, sinewy drumming, Albini‘s firm vocals and the raw and rough post-punk dynamics at play. Absolutely weird
to listen to it, with the incredible knowledge that Albini is here no more.
He passed away on May 7, following a heart attack.
Only 10 days before the album release.
Sad, really sad.
The album closes with the ominous track I Don’t Fear Hell, including these lines “I don’t fear hell. Their baseball team is undefeated. If there’s a heaven, I hope they’re
having fun. ‘Cause if there’s a hell, I’m gonna know everyone.” Sounds quite bizarre and macabre at this very moment. Maybe, just maybe, Albini is happy, wherever he might
be. Rest in peace.
TUTV said: Monoscopes made an ideal record for the midnight hours, to relax
and escape from the daily rat race and lose yourself in your thoughts of choice.
Heavy-hearted lullaby pearls such as ‘The Electric Muse (I Wanna Know Why?)’, Hey Atlas and The Things You Want To Hide should be hits in a normal world. Imagine the moody musings of Evan Dando (The Lemonheads) interwoven with the shadowy electricity of NYC’s celebs Interpol.
And when they turn up the temperature and the amps, now and then, like on top-tier tracks ‘It’s A Shame About You’ and ‘Quite Life‘ you feel the mixed emotions coming through your speakers making their way to your heart and to your soul. Top!
TUTV: As a solo artist, he recorded/released several LPs. As a producer, he worked
with Los Lobos, Elvis Costello, Brandi Carlile, and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss and so many
more. He toured with Bob Dylan and other famous friends and he won a bunch of Grammys.
The Other Side is a concept record about a “mysterious couple” having adventures
in an otherworldly America. The by-now 76-year-old Burnett translate their mixed
emotions experiences in lovey-dovey lullabies, heartfelt musings, and nostalgic
ballads.
This is the perfect record for daydreaming and relaxation. Soft, mellow, and tender.
His slightly hoarse Americana voice enchants and entices all through this sepia-colored album. 12 bittersweet serenades for the midnight hours, away from our hyperbenthic reality. Pure compassionate romanticism. Pure songsmith.
TUTV follows British misfits FAT WHITE FAMILY since the day his ears got perplexed by their 2013 debut LP Champagne Holocaust, a controversial piece of drug-fueled mental disorder.
The same year I saw them playing live for the first time. It happened in my hometown of Ghent (Belgium), in a small club with about 50 people checking out this new post-punk gang and spreading the exciting word afterward. Last Saturday in Antwerp it was the 6th time I saw them and the audience go bonkers.
Again, it was a FUCKTASTIC EXPERIENCE. Another changed line-up, but producing the
very same FLABBERGASTING FUROR as before. Chaotic, insane and baffling. As all fans know Lias Saoudi is the driving force, the heart and soul, the great voice, and the emotive engine of FWF.
His magnetic live presence, his charismatic, go-getter way of performing, and his mood-swing vocal pizzaz are overwhelming. Without the drugs, now sipping tea, Lias‘s physical condition is as powerful as Rocky Balboa‘s one in his boxing heyday.
As their new brilliant, 4th album Forgiveness Is Yours is by far their best, their most complete and sonically/lyrically different one, I wondered how songs of it would go
down live. It went down the jaw-dropping FWF way.
They integrated half of the LP seamlessly – making the new, capricious spoken-word-waterfall jam Today You Become Man work perfectly live is nothing less than amazing –
in their familiar classic setlist with imperishable golden post-punk oldies ‘I Am Mark E Smith’, ‘Tinfoil Deathstar’, Satisfied, Hits Hits Hits and grandiose closer ‘Whitest Boy On
The Beach‘.
A Fat White Family concert is like having an aural orgasm, is like experiencing a psychedelic trance in an overheated sauna, is like watching/hearing THE BEST FUCKING BAND IN THE WORLD WITH THE BEST FUCKING FRONTMAN IN THE WORLD. Don’t break up, yet, motherrockers.
