Back in the 1950s, conservative commentators greeted the nascent rock’n’roll movement with apocalyptic narratives of social breakdown and perpetual juvenile delinquency. But with having long ago been co-opted into mainstream culture, rock’n’roll’s original jagged edge has been blunted into a plastic party knife, its provocative rhetoric corrupted by corporate interests and derivative egotists.
And then there’s Fat White Family. Fat White Family are a rock’n’roll band with a don’t give a flying fuck, blow it out your square hairy arse attitude. But whereas Fat White Family pushed the envelope of taste on their first album, Songs For Our Mothers takes a different tact. Sure, there is some seriously sharp rock’n’roll in the mix: Whitest Boy on the Beach rams Duane Eddy through an electronic filter and flies off on a Krautrock carpet ride, while Satisfied writhes seductively on a bed of glittering T. Rex riffs.
But it’s the darker moments that provide a clue to Fat White Family’s complex state of existence. Love is the Crack is Pink Floyd lost in a fog of narcotics and emotional torment, Duce is Tusk played by Gregorian monks and Lebensraum is a drugged out lament for personal space and psychological freedom. On Hits, Hits, Hits, Fat White Family take us down a psychedelic route, part Moon Duo minimalism, part Brian Eno enigmatic exploration, part Jerry Garcia opiated indulgence. On Tinfoil Deathstar, the Family are back on a Bolan trip, and it’s weird and fucking wonderful. When Shipman Decides is just plain weird, like the house band on a Pacific cruise ship possessed by Sonny Bono demons and Ricky Nelson zombies; and the seven-minute We Must Learn to Rise is The Stooges’ We Will Fall wrapped in a gothic Black Angels cloak.
Finally, there’s Goodbye Goebbels, an acoustic trip that strips away the self-indulgent political propaganda that hides the brutal, cannibalistic reality of our modern world. Fat White Family knows that, and you should too.
BY PATRICK EMERY
