First things first: this isn’t ‘Champagne Holocaust’.
There it’s been said. No good sitting there expecting playful subversion and wry ‘Carry-On Mind F*ck’ type lambasting of convention. So, what is to be expected from ‘Songs for Our Mothers’?
Well, the subversion is still there. The deconstruction of convention, at least of what’s expected of a second album, is still there. The Mark E. Smith of The Fall fixation is also still present. Instead though, this time the Fat White Family have fallen further down the rabbit hole and been enveloped by the darkness down there.
And here it begins. ‘Songs for Our Mothers’ basically takes ‘Champagne Holocaust’ out to a secluded place and puts it out of its misery. It’s a statement which simply proclaims that they don’t care what you think, what you were expecting, or what you wanted. This is their music.
Opening track ‘Whitest Boy On The Beach’ is wonderfully minimal yet euphoric and aggressive – it’s Jean Michelle Jarre meets Suicide, while ‘Satisfied’ is as close as it gets here to single material. It’s still a total shambles, but that is why we’re all here after all.
Then come the soundscapes. Songs are gone, it’s paraphernalia as music, like taking the lucid trip of Beefheart’s ‘Trout Mask Replica’ into the unconscious. ‘Duce’ sounds more like the onomatopoeic sound of paranoia until it finally coalesces into something tangible during its death throws. ‘Lebensraum’, which feels like a disconcerting far left reimagining of The Doors’ ‘Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)’, is unsettling but no less uninteresting.
And this continues. From ‘Tinfoil Deathstar’ to ‘We Must Learn’ there’s a whole Berlin-period Bowie meets Mogwai on downers thing happening. Trundling, powerful and brilliant. It’s the ‘Hot Wet Beef’ trip gone even further awry.
But all this is ignoring the elephant in the room: the intense attempts at ‘shock’. Many would suggest titles like ‘Goodbye Goebbels’ and ‘When Shipman Decides’ are there simply to create controversy, but that’s not what they feel like upon listening. These aren’t pointless forays into the crass. ‘When Shipman Decides’ is a brilliant juxtaposition of taste and tone, a Hawaiian shanty for the criminally insane. So who’s more wrong, the Fat White Family for writing it, or me for enjoying it?
If anything, the ‘shock factor’ seems to be there to scare away the simpletons. The darker recesses of the imagination fuel this record, and toying Nazi imagery etc is nothing new in music. And on ‘Songs for Our Mothers’ the song titles, production, pace, tone, rhythms and everything else besides are designed to challenge. Designed to push boundaries and taste. Surely that’s the point of music? Maybe not the only point, but an important one.
‘Songs for Our Mothers’ is a braver, more experimental record than its predecessor, of that there’s no doubt. But is everybody ready for it?
No, because this isn’t a record for everyone, it’s only for those who are really listening.
(Dylan Llewellyn-Nunes)