It's often galling to see what other writers can do with the same album and a more generous word count - but it would be petty not to salute JR Moores' superb review of Fat White Family's new album Forgiveness Is Yours just because I've written my own.
Moores nails certain songs. 'Religion For One', for instance, is aptly described as "the Fat Whites' version of a lounge ballad" and "not a million miles away from what Arctic Monkeys have been doing of late, albeit with greater emphasis on failure, pain, humiliation and resentment". Even better is the characterisation of creepy closer (and standout song) 'You Can't Force It' as an "elegant final number [that] feels like peeling the skin from Noel Coward's face to find yourself confronted by the rotten-toothed grin of Papa Lazarou". More League of Gentlemen references in music reviews, I say!
The album also proves to be a prompt for a more general discussion of the phenomenon of musicians claiming or at least implying, somewhat arrogantly, that they're the last passengers aboard the good ship Rock 'N' Roll as it crashes and sinks. That doesn't wash with Moores, quite rightly: "At the risk of sounding like the once-urgent lyricist turned mainstream festival bore, Alex Turner, rock & roll will never die. It mutates. It is cyclical. It shrinks and then swells like a leathery pufferfish. It repeats itself. Young musicians make similar mistakes and commit to the same cliches as countless others did prior." It seems strange to suggest that a band as willfully perverse as Fat White Family - or a frontman as unique as Lias Saoudi, at least - might be at all cliched, but it's a fair point well made.
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