26 August 2020
(photo by Turn Up The Volume! Belgium 2019)
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.
Here we go…
FAT WHITE FAMILY: Facebook
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…
The following 15 Knockout Tracks activated my limbs, impressed
my greedy ears and made me move in mysterious ways in 2019.
1. ‘Better’ by RICH GIRLS ((New York, NY, US)
A punchy and mesmeric shot of electrifying guitar pop adrenalin…
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2. ‘Feet’ by FAT WHITE FAMILY (London, UK)
A chant-like odyssey with a ghostly and hypnotic vibe and – yes – a Gregorian choir…
3. ‘Air BnB’ by KIM GORDON (US)
A battering jackhammer with a vehement drift and a gloomy impact…
4. ‘Hurricane Laughter’ by FONTAINES D.C. (Dublin, Ireland)
Stormy steamroller with an irresistible punk drive by one of the best new bands in town…
5. ‘White Male Carnivore’ by YAK (London, UK)
This is a really nasty sledgehammer. A thunderous rocker with a droning force…
6. ‘Going Norway’ by GIRL BAND (Dublin, Ireland)
Bone-crushing chainsaw electricity and exorcistic howling. Demonic stuff…
7. ‘More Is Less’ by THE MURDER CAPITAL (Dublin, Ireland)
A dazzling post punk uppercut fueled with stormy guitars and angry vocals all over it…
8. ‘Cave Person’ by PEUK (Belgium)
A sickly catchy, grungy outburst with the scariest primal screams I heard in years…
9. ‘Destiny’ by PRYSM (England)
A multi-layered tumultuous stunner that grabs you by the throat from the get-go…
10. ‘Time Bomb Sounds’ by THE LOCALS (Chicago, US)
An emotional corker resonating gloriously rapturous and exultantly epic…
11. ‘Motor City Steel’ by THE DANDY WARHOLS
An utterly addictive earworm that keeps buzzing in your head after one spin…
12. ‘Disco Peanuts’ by WARMDUSCHER (London, UK)
Funky disco fuel for all misfits, outsiders, and desperadoes out there…
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13. ‘Ar.Mour’ by UNKLE Feat. Miink & Elliot Power (UK)
Trip-hop at its trippy best. Tantalizing beats, dancey vibrations, and an addictive rhythm…
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14. ‘Ego’ by FERAL FIVE (London/Kent, UK)
A vibrating and flamboyant European disco cracker to dance yourself dizzy to…
15. ‘The Desert’ by WHERE WE SLEEP (London, UK)
Intoxicating swagger, sensuous vocals, hellish guitars, cutting atmosphere…
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All 15 Knockout Tracks
together on Spotify…
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Memorable live moments…
Band: Fat White Family
Song: Feet – lead single from their, third new LP Serfs Up!
Where & when: Glastonbury Festival, UK – June 2019
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Facebook
FAT WHITE FAMILY – Botanique, Brussels – 12 June 2019
(All pics by Turn Up The Volume!)
Many new dates to come. Check them all here.
Stream newest excellent Fat White Family album SERFS UP! this way…
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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.
Capture the sensitive vibe here…
FAT WHITE FAMILY: Facebook
From their newest album SERFS UP! Streamable on Spotify
(photo on top by Turn Up The Volume!)
Fat White Family‘s ringleader Lias Saudi about L.A and Hollywood…
Full NME interview here / TUTV’s live review of their recent Belgian festival show here
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…
Madman in the middle…
The Fat White Family Orchestra…
“I’m Mark E. Smith”…
Best ringleader on this troubled planet…
Believing in something better…
Stream new album SERFS UP! here…
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Singles/clips from the LP…
– FEET –
– TASTES GOOD WITH THE MONEY –
– WHEN I LEAVE –
FAT WHITE FAMILY: Facebook
(All concert pics by Turn Up The Volume!)
Weekly series of five rolling ripsnorters to go completely bananas to this summer…
Here we go again! Dance yourself dizzy! Bonkers time!…
1. ‘All For One’ by THE STONE ROSES
(2015 single)
2. ‘Feet’ by FAT WHITE FAMILY
(From new LP Serfs Up!)
3. ‘Paradox’ by SEXTILE
(From this year’s ‘3‘ EP)
4. ‘Motor City Steel’ by THE DANDY WARHOLS
(From this year’s Why You So Crazy album)
5. ‘Shake It’ by FERAL FIVE
(Newest single)
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!
PICS
A wall-of-Saul-psych-guitar-sound…
One Fat White Family member down…
Meet and greet with the stunned fans…
Rest of the gang…
Head of the family…
Stream new album
SERFS UP! here…
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FAT WHITE FAMILY: Facebook
(All concert pics by Turn Up The Volume!)
