Wikipedia puts the number for the members of the Fat White Family at 16 in 14 years, but frontman Lias Saoudi’s best estimate in 2019 was that there had already been 25. Of the original six-piece lineup, only Saoudi and guitarist Adam J. Harmer remain. While people often (incorrectly) liken the band to The Fall, this is one department in which the comparison holds water.
Although the band’s early career was characterised by a revolving cast in the rhythm section, the departures of founding members Saul Adamczewski and Nathan Saoudi between third album Serf’s Up and its follow-up Forgiveness Is Yoursrepresented an existential change to the band – we are now in a different era of The Fat White Family, something that Konk If You’re Lonely makes abundantly clear.
There was a time, somewhere amidst the haze of the band’s first three albums, that you’d kill for a live Fat White Family album – indeed, it would have been essential. While their studio efforts were often brilliant yet patchy affairs, the band were, by some reckoning, the best live act in the world. It was all chaos and righteous maelstrom, equal parts indomitable and shambolic – a sleaze rock juggernaut that could fall apart at any moment. But maybe, as evidenced here, that is no longer really the case.
An important thing to note, though, is that this is not a pure live album. They aren’t feeding off, or indeed fighting off, an audience. Konk If You’re Lonely belongs to the same Domino Documents series as Julia Holter’s crystalline In The Same Room album; it is a record taped as a live set, in the high-spec Konk Studios in North London, made up of material that spans the band’s entire career.
But the tracklisting does follow a chronology similar to how a barnstorming live show would go down, and it is not meant as a “definitive” rerecording of old songs by any stretch – it opens with the dirty swagger of early EP track ‘Wet Hot Beef’ and closes with the band’s most beloved single, ‘Whitest Boy On The Beach’.
The first thing you notice is that Fat Whites’ sound is far cleaner than ever before – at times it has a squeaky sheen, garage rock without much clatter or chaos. The synth bass on ‘Feet’ is pure CSS, LCD, millennium dance-punk, while the echoing ‘Hits Hits Hits’ forgoes the muggy analogue drum machines of the studio version in favour of clean stadium rock drumming and indulgent guitar solos.
These changes are not necessarily bad in isolation; ‘Feet’ is probably the set highlight, a real mutant groover, whilst ‘Bobby’s Boyfriend’ actually becomes creepier for its more skeletal arrangements. ‘Satisfied’ benefits from a metallic industrial guitar line, and the reptilian crooner ‘Religion For One’ is brought to life by some Rowland S. Howard skronk-noir licks.
However, straightened up versions of live favourites ‘Whitest Boy On The Beach’ and ‘Tinfoil Deathstar’ suffer for lack of mania and a flatness that doesn’t tally with the memories of incendiary live shows. A more minimalist version of ‘I Am Mark E Smith’, meanwhile, neither stomps nor galumphs with the same heaviness that it did when N. Saoudi was chief organ grinder. “Even with half the first team suspended, injured, or away indefinite sabbatical,” the band wrote on Instagram: “It still pisses all over your dad.” But… does it? Over my… dad?
Throughout, Lias Saoudi occupies a weird half space. He is far more animated than on the studio albums, but the performances are a long way from the squirming exorcisms he delivered live when the band were at the peak of their powers. At his best, Saoudi is pure energy, but that isn’t quite the case here.
Maybe that’s just getting older. Changing priorities as singer of the Fat White Family. Shrieking less, crooning more – a Nick Caveification. It’s been over a decade since that David Letterman performance, and it’s been a long while since he peanut-buttered himself up, it’s only natural that the band would grow up a bit. But this would be an oversimplification. He is still absolutely electric when he fronts cyberpunk acid house combo Decius, and the sole new track ‘Parisian Heatwave’ debuted here is definitely from the same provocative school of songwriting as the rest of the band’s material.
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All this means that Konk If You’re Lonely, whilst having its fair share of moments, is more uncanny than it is vital. It is a document of a band that is neither here nor there. Long since grown out of smearing themselves in human shit, singing “all your kids are naked in my mind,” but also a long way from figuring out what comes next. What comes after utter chaos?
It does go a little way to capturing the live magic of the Fat White Family at their malevolent best, but definitely stops short of brilliance. Results are mixed as the group shut up and play the hits – roughly half of it sounds better than it ever has before, and roughly half of it doesn’t really scratch the itch. It feels ultimately like this group has been assembled by Lias as a reaction to the folly that followed the band during its Saoudi-Saoudi-Adamczewski era, and whilst that has its perks, it also has its pitfalls. A new era dawns – but it is a new era where a Fat White Family live album is not a totally essential release.
