Songs For Our Mothers isn’t an aggressive listening experience, mind you. For the most part, a less engaged listener could dig the warped garagey post-punk sounds without noticing the lyrical concerns. None of the songwriting’s especially unconventional either, and songs like Whitest Boy on the Beach and Satisfied are immediately ear-catching and melodious.
“I want to make pop music, sometimes,” says guitarist and chief songwriter Saul Adamczewski. “I think Hits Hits Hits is a pop song. I’m a bit out of touch with the mainstream, but that’s as close to pop as we’ve ever got. I wanted that to sound like Hot Chocolate.”
The album was recorded with Sean Lennon in upstate New York, and in terms of production and song craft, it’s a development from the band’s last LP, Champagne Holocaust. That said, the whole thing possesses a druggy haze. It doesn’t necessarily sound like its makers were on drugs – regardless of whether they were – but the whole thing’s very woozy, very blurry. Adamczewski says the smacked out sound of the record wasn’t intentional, inasmuch as there weren’t any grand intentions.
“There’s never an aesthetic that is premeditated. It’s just how it comes out. It probably did have quite a lot to do with the drugs that we were on at the time.”
The album covers a range of genres, from krautrock and garage blues to loopy Syd Barrett folk-psych, glam rock, and even a grotesque waltz. But despite this diversity and the band’s aberrant psychological perspective, it all sounds reasonably familiar.
“Most of the band can’t really play their instruments, so there’s a naivety to the way we play,” Adamczewski says. “I’ve always found things like weird time signatures a bit irritating. I’m quite simple minded like that – I like the basic verse-chorus kind of structure. I like to twist that a little bit and distort it a little bit, but essentially that’s what I like. I’m not trying to be in Slint or anything like that.”
At the same time, nothing sounds like a rip-off. The record upholds a sinister and disconcertingly tongue-in-cheek personality, which is what separates Fat White Family from many of their peers.
“Because so many other bands these days are devoid of any kind of charisma or character whatsoever, when there is a band that sound like a bunch of human beings with ideas it actually seems to be something that people want to talk about. It’s not so much a compliment to us; more a damnation on everyone else.”
In this context, Fat White Family can be seen as a group of antagonisers trying to some inject life back into rock music, no matter how filthy or lurid. But in assuming this role, is there a greater social agenda – do they think rock music should go beyond the realm of entertainment and contribute a critical perspective on society?
“I don’t think rock music should do anything. I just think it’s a shame that it doesn’t,” Adamczewski says. “I think that there are plenty of bands that are saying things, plenty of bands with great ideas, plenty of bands who are making interesting music with charisma and character and personality. But it’s the male-run, middle-aged music industry that’s worried about the fact that they’re dying a slow death that is keeping things safe – and therefore killing themselves at the same time.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
