A British indie band with a deliberately off-putting sound and outlook, Fat White Family have become unlikely stars in the United Kingdom and Europe with rough-hewn music and lyrics that confront conventional standards of morality and good taste. The band's crude, misanthropic approach was at its strongest on their first two albums, 2013's Champagne Holocaust and 2016's Songs for Our Mothers. They adopted a somewhat cleaner and less confrontational approach on 2019's Serf's Up! and the album became a commercial success in the U.K., and 2024's Forgiveness Is Yours was steeped in electronics and bent pop songs, while also including some of their most uncomfortably personal storytelling to date. Formed in a squat in Peckham in 2011, the first lineup of Fat White Family featured Lias Kaci Saoudi (vocals), Adam Harmer (guitar), Saul Adaczewski (guitar), Nathan Saudi (keyboard), Joe Pancucci (bass), and Dan Lyons (drummer). The band soon garnered critical and public adulation for their scuzzy mix of rock & roll, post-punk, country, and nihilistic psychedelia, earning comparisons to the Fall, the Birthday Party, Butthole Surfers, and Charles Manson. Following a series of highly charged gigs in early 2013, the Brixton-based band released their first single, "Cream of the Young," that March. They released their debut album, Champagne Holocaust, two months later, as well as additional singles during 2013-2014: a split 7" with the band Taman Shud, "Touch the Leather," "I Am Mark E Smith," and "Auto Neutron." By this time, lead singer Saudi had suffered a string of serious illnesses, including pneumonia, which, combined with a negative reception from some critics, indirectly led to the creation of an even more vitriolic, incensed second studio effort, Songs for Our Mothers, released in early 2016. The band promoted the effort with a nationwide and European tour which lasted throughout 2016 and 2017. Fat White Family returned to the studio in 2018 to write their third LP. The effort, titled Serfs Up!, marked their debut release for Domino Records and arrived in early 2019. The album was their biggest commercial success to date, peaking at Number 17 on the U.K. album charts, and the band toured in support until the COVID-19 pandemic closed venues in 2020. Lias Kaci Saoudi used his downtime to write a book about his experiences in the band, Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure, written in collaboration with Adelle Stripe. The book was nominated for the 2023 Penderyn Music Book Prize, a prestigious British award for writing pertaining to music. Fat White Family's fourth album, 2024's Forgiveness Is Yours, was created during a period of conflict within the group the result is an LP that was musically polished and lyrically among their darkest work to date; it included "Today You Are a Man," a harrowing narrative based on Lias Kaci Saoudi's experience of being circumcised without anesthesia at the age of five. ~ Aneet Nijjar & Mark Deming, Rovi

Battles, Fat White Family

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