Sick Health - Fat White Family Review

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