Watch London based bohemians FAT WHITE FAMILY, one of the best bands of the
21st century – FACT! – playing Feet, the standout lead single from their standout,
third album SERFS UP! at Glastonbury Festival in 2019.
Hands up if you like these ten stunning tracks as much as I do. Ten standout performances that send shivers down my spine, ten goosebumps crackers I can listen to any moment of the day, ten stunners I heard for about 1 million times, and will countless times again in the future.
Here’s why…
1. Dead & Gone’ by TOY (UK)
Smashing psychedelia with a mind-blowing finale…
2. ‘I Am Mark E Smith by FAT WHITE FAMILY (UK)
One of the best live bands of the past 10 years…
3. ‘Chlorine’ by THE DISTRICTS (Philadelphia, PA)
Overwhelming passion, towering intensity…
4. ‘Despair’ by YEAH YEAH YEAHS (US)
Gorgeous pop queen Karen O at her very best…
5. ‘Baby I Call Hell’ by DEAP VALLY (California, US)
Kick-ass blues rock frenzy by two utterly cool ladies…
6. ‘Common People‘ by PULP (UK) Jarvis Cocker‘s orgiastic performance leads to spectacular euphoria…
7. ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony by THE VERVE (UK)
Fist-pumping anthem…
8. ‘Laid’ by James (UK)
No festivals this year, but this is my ecstatic alternative…
9. ‘Fried My Little Brains’ by THE KILLS (UK/US)
I’m in love with Alison Mosshart, she does my brains in…
10. ‘Rocks’ by PRIMAL SCREAM (Scotland)
The steamy ripper The Rolling Stones never wrote…
Relaxing reveries for the laziest day of the week…
8 September 2019
All their devoted – bizarro and cranky – fans like me, know that rad British desperadoes FAT WHITE FAMILY love to shock, love to trigger controversy, but most of all they love to write songs about the unlucky ones, the desperate ones, the depressed ones, the eccentric ones, hopeless ones and all sorts of outlaws who hate reality. Yes FWF has a soft spot for all the outcasts because they were born outcasts themselves.
‘WHEN I LEAVE’, one of the moodiest moments on their new LP (and released as its third single) seems to cover that passionate empathy for all of us who can’t cope with normality, exploitation and authoritarian political regimes where only the people that make money counts.
FAT WHITE FAMILY – Dour festival Belgium – Sunday 14 July 2019
Dedicated followers know that Turn Up The Volume has his eye and ears on wayward motherrockers FAT WHITE FAMILY from their early days on. So far this gang made 3 albums, 2 half great ones and one near-brilliant (their newest: Serfs Up!) and blew my hungry mind every time I saw them take a stage. Yesterday night at Dour festival in Belgium it happened once more again despite the fact that Saul Adamczewski and his astonishing live guitar psych play was nowhere to be seen or heard. He was replaced (partially) by a sultry saxophone player. Guess what? It worked damn well. Hell yeah!
Needless to say that hyperkinetic frontman Lias Saudi led the trippy troops again with a red-hot-blooded intensity and a raging persuasiveness. One day his head will explode on the podium. He’s the madman in the middle every single second. Yes, Lias, we know you wanna be the best. You know, you’re actually the best fucking ringleader on the planet right now of the only band that matters right now and that ended a steamy performance with the terrifically frenetic closer ‘Bomb Disneyland‘ leaving an ecstatic crowd behind begging for more. I’m still bloody tired after a long day/night writing this stuff this very moment so I’ll leave you with some visual impressions of the Fat Whites Bombing Dour…
FAT WHITE FAMILY – Botanique, Brussels – 12 June 2019
Turn Up The Volume! followed British desperadoes FAT WHITE FAMILY since the day his ears got perplexed by their 2014 debut LP Champagne Holocaust, a controversial piece of drug-fueled mental disorder. Since then I saw these anarchistic misfits going entirely bonkers on stage 3 times. Three unforgettable gigs. Chaotic, insane and baffling. Best fucking live band in the world I wrote back in 2016 (review here). Then key members Lias Saoudi and Saul Adamczewski took some time off to get clean(er) and making great stuff with other projects (The Moonlandingz and Insecure Men). Now three years and two FWF full lengths (the second was Songs For Our Mothers) later the Family is back. New album SERFS UP is as their two other LP’s half brilliant/half mediocre (meaning they made so far, a one and a 1/2 masterpiece). Yesterday they landed in Brussels to entertain
a sold out hungry club.
HIGHS
* Saul Adamczewski‘s mind-blowing psychedelic guitar play
was off the charts and dominated pretty much the whole concert
* The old jackhammers (like ‘I Am Mark E Smith’, ‘Tinfoil Deathstar’ and
‘Whitest Boy On The Beach‘) still carried the show and were the ones who
made the crowd go sickly bananas
* The set’s closer ‘Is It Raining In Your Mouth?‘ (from the debut LP) was (again)
the indisputable FUCKING INSANE KNOCKOUT HAMMER with frontman Lias
Saoudi‘s vox going totally apeshit beyond normality. One day his head will
explode while screaming his brains out…
LOWS
* Most of the time Saoudi‘s vocals got lost in the guitar-oriented mix.
A damn bloody sin as his voice is ESSENTIAL!
* Most of the new songs are sensuous and smooth and undermine
the feverish flow when played live. Pump them, up, cowboys!
* The new LP’s groovy killer cut ‘Feet‘ got lost in a cacophonic
mess-mix, so its hypnotic swagger got slaughtered. SHAME!
CONCLUSION: Maybe my expectations were too high but this show was half brilliant/half mediocre, half speed/half valium like their albums, but still way much better than many of the current competition. Fix the mix, drop the slow ones or pump them up and become the most challenging and dangerous band in the world again, you motherrockers!