FAT WHITE FAMILY / JOHN FRANCIS FLYNN, 10TH JUNE 2024, CARDIFF GLOBE
Covers bands are the Globe's meat and drink, but John Francis Flynn is cut from a different cloth. The Dubliner's renditions of traditional Irish and American songs such as 'Kitty' and 'Mole In The Ground' are less covers and more reinterpretations, constructively reimagined for the current moment, cloaked in darkness. Drawing on drones, tape manipulation and subtle electronic effects, he sings of painful memories and drinking blood like wine. Twee, cosy, fireside folk this is not.
Gripping the mic stand with eyes closed, Flynn has the intimidating stature of Mark Lanegan (who, as a resident of Killarney prior to his untimely death, might well have gone on to make music like this). Instrumental 'Tralee Gaol' is performed on a pair of tin whistles taped together to create an eerie analogue echo, and a sublime bare-bones version of 'Dirty Old Town' closes the set. These are songs that are not so much covered as carefully handed down, passed from generation to generation, and Flynn is clearly a respectful yet innovative custodian, allowing the past to speak through (and to) the present.
Reviewing Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family And The Miracle Of Failure for the Observer, Miranda Sawyer succinctly described co-author Lias Saoudi's band as "always on the brink: of stardom, of madness, of brilliance, of disgrace". From birth, Fat White Family have been synonymous with instability, controversy and acrimony - and earlier this year it seemed that they'd finally reached breaking point. Saoudi revealed that the creative process behind latest album Forgiveness Is Yours was a "nonstop fucking argument", and the Metro went as far as reporting that they'd split in the wake of "a complete breakdown", with Lias' brother Nathan having followed fellow founder member Saul Adamczewski out of the door. And yet here they are, a rag-tag bunch of charity-shop trousers, mullets, waistcoats and berets, launching into 'John Lennon'. As ever, it seems, rumours of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Confession time: I'm here half hoping for a car crash. For all their combustibility and volatility, and for all the rabidly enthusiastic reports of feral Fat White Family performances, previous encounters have only ever left me feeling let down by a band who seemed to be merely going through the motions, as curiously unsatisfying as their albums.
That tonight will be totally different is immediately evident.
The band are on furious (and remarkably coherent) form, but Saoudi is the barometer, a bare-torsoed Iggy-esque conductor of ceremonies who's roaming around in the crowd just three songs in ('Tinfoil Deathstar'). Admittedly, appearing onstage in nothing but a Legends Of The Fall T-shirt and a pair of black briefs is relatively tame for a vocalist who once performed while getting showered in a dead man's ashes and who wore flesh-coloured Spanx and smeared himself with butter to support Liam Gallagher at Knebworth. But it does enable him to do his best Cornholio impression, and the ever-present risk of a wardrobe malfunction ensures a frisson of danger. Thankfully, the elastic of his M&S pants (an upgrade from the H&M kecks of yore - "I've written a best-selling book") holds firm and the boys remain safely in the barracks.
Not that matters below the belt are off the agenda. 'Today You Become Man', the stand-out track on Forgiveness Is Yours (complete with Verve pisstake video), is a rapid-fire spoken-word account of his older brother's circumcision, and 'Touch The Leather' oozes sweat and seediness. Two of the latest record's slower songs, 'Visions Of Pain' and 'Religion For One' (the latter about "when I was a Scientologist", allegedly) come into their sickly, creepy own, while sordid disco thumper 'Feet' and greatest hit 'Whitest Boy On The Beach' ensure a frenzied climax. Perhaps most unsettling is the way in which echoes of everything from Billy Idol to ABBA and EMF's 'Unbelievable' are sucked into their vortex.
Sometimes it's preferable to see bands at the tail-end of tours, when the set is slick and finely honed. By contrast, I'm glad to have caught Fat White Family right at the start, burning so brightly and brilliantly before the (surely inevitable) burn-out.
(An edited version of this review appeared on the Buzz website.)
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