Fat White Family
Songs for Our Mothers
If there's one thing wrong with pop music today (and there is) it's that it suffers from a suffocating feeling of good health. Even in ostensibly rough and unwashed genres like metal and hip-hop, everything seems far too clean. It's like record companies, radio stations and musicians themselves are afraid of letting their music show any sign that the world is anything other than a non-stop party, that there are any problems that can't be solved by the time the chorus finishes. Caring is out of fashion; polish is king.
Fat White Family care. Fat White Family are not polished. Fat White Family are the perfect antidote to the enforced civility of modern pop (aren't we all a bit tired of being civil?). For one thing, they're not afraid of sounding fucked up - from the simmering menace of "Whitest Boy on the Beach" to the unsettlingly direct confrontation with fascism of "Duce" and "Goodbye Goebbels," to the general queasy sound of the album as a whole, this is a band that seem to take pleasure in making you feel like you've just found a cockroach in your curry. And songs like Tinfoil Deathstar, which deals with both heroin addiction and the death of austerity victim David Clapson, show that Fat White Family are willing to be seen to give a shit. What's more, they actually appear to have some kind of political viewpoint. In a world where the closest thing to political commitment displayed by most musicians is a quick set at a benefit gig for whatever cause is in the news, Fat White Family actually seem to do shit. Their first major bit of press came when they organised a street party to celebrate the death of Margaret Thatcher; they've participated in anti-gentrification actions, and raised thousands of pounds for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign; they've used the word "socialism" and, what's more, they actually seem to know what it means.
But more important than any of that is the music itself. All the intelligence and worthy actions in the world mean nothing if you can't play. Fortunately, they can. Songs for Our Mothers is a solid album; chaotic, multifaceted and creepy as fuck. The whole thing has a kind of off-kilter vibe to it, like that moment when you first realise you've drunk too much, and you're about to be sick. It's jarring - in contrast to the barely-controlled mayhem of their live shows, the album foregoes aggression and focuses on atmosphere. The rhythms stagger and lurch, the vocals are just a little too quiet to hear properly, but loud enough for you to catch a few key phrases. The music itself varies from Autobahn-era Kraftwerk on "Whitest Boy on the Beach" to country on album closer "Goodbye Goebbels," a love song from Hitler to his right-hand man that actually manages to be quite touching. It's almost as if the band set out to write as many different kinds of songs as possible, only without the self-indulgence that that implies - these songs have clearly been slaved over. I really do wish, though, that the vocals were mixed a bit higher - what few lyrics I can make out are great, and I really wish I could hear the rest of them.
Rating: 8/10
Friday 29 January 2016
Sunday 24 January 2016
Review - Bowie
David Bowie
Blackstar
Something happened on the day he died
- David Bowie, "Blackstar"
Faced with death - whether from old age or a potentially fatal illness - most musicians withdraw a little and make stripped-down, solemn records where they play the acoustic guitar and sing about the transience of life. Johnny Cash did it with his American series, Leonard Cohen's been doing it for about twenty years, and one might have expected the recently deceased David Bowie to do something similar. But if there's one thing you could say with certainty about Bowie, it's that he never did what the world expected. More than anyone else, except perhaps his friend and contemporary Lou Reed, David Bowie made a point of never making the same record twice, always moving forward, creating the trend rather than trying to fit in with it, and he continued that approach on his final album, Blackstar.
It's taken me a long time to write this review, because Blackstar is the kind of album you have to listen to more than once to really appreciate it. This isn't the Bowie of "Starman" and "Rebel Rebel". Instead, the songs on Blackstar are closer to the more experimental Station to Station. The music is a collection of sounds, more about feeling than melody, while the lyrics are dense, obscure, impressionistic. Even on "Dollar Days", the album's most direct song, the lyrics are more allusive than descriptive. But even though Station to Station and Bowie's previous album The Next Day offer good starting points for a description of the sounds to be found on Blackstar, the fact remains that this represents new ground for Bowie. Unlike any of Bowie's previous works, Blackstar has the feeling of a jazz album - the way the sounds fit together is reminiscent of Bitches Brew more than anything else - while the lyrics show more of the influence of Bowie's hero Scott Walker. Sadly, we'll never know what Bowie would have gone on to do had he lived, but Blackstar gives the impression of an artist about to embark on a new phase in his career.
What Blackstar proves above all else is that, even approaching seventy and fighting a losing battle with cancer, David Bowie was at the height of his powers as an artist, and the body of work he left us with is something few artists can compete with.
Rating: 10/10
Blackstar
Something happened on the day he died
- David Bowie, "Blackstar"
Faced with death - whether from old age or a potentially fatal illness - most musicians withdraw a little and make stripped-down, solemn records where they play the acoustic guitar and sing about the transience of life. Johnny Cash did it with his American series, Leonard Cohen's been doing it for about twenty years, and one might have expected the recently deceased David Bowie to do something similar. But if there's one thing you could say with certainty about Bowie, it's that he never did what the world expected. More than anyone else, except perhaps his friend and contemporary Lou Reed, David Bowie made a point of never making the same record twice, always moving forward, creating the trend rather than trying to fit in with it, and he continued that approach on his final album, Blackstar.
It's taken me a long time to write this review, because Blackstar is the kind of album you have to listen to more than once to really appreciate it. This isn't the Bowie of "Starman" and "Rebel Rebel". Instead, the songs on Blackstar are closer to the more experimental Station to Station. The music is a collection of sounds, more about feeling than melody, while the lyrics are dense, obscure, impressionistic. Even on "Dollar Days", the album's most direct song, the lyrics are more allusive than descriptive. But even though Station to Station and Bowie's previous album The Next Day offer good starting points for a description of the sounds to be found on Blackstar, the fact remains that this represents new ground for Bowie. Unlike any of Bowie's previous works, Blackstar has the feeling of a jazz album - the way the sounds fit together is reminiscent of Bitches Brew more than anything else - while the lyrics show more of the influence of Bowie's hero Scott Walker. Sadly, we'll never know what Bowie would have gone on to do had he lived, but Blackstar gives the impression of an artist about to embark on a new phase in his career.
What Blackstar proves above all else is that, even approaching seventy and fighting a losing battle with cancer, David Bowie was at the height of his powers as an artist, and the body of work he left us with is something few artists can compete with.
Rating: 10/10
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