It’s worth noting that Fat White Family’s notoriety has been built as much by their sordid antics on stage, as it has by their often crude lyrics. Although their Sheffield performance is comparably ‘tame’ on their gauge , the band still succeeds in producing a live spectacle that’s exhilarating, yet incredibly unnerving.
The band are not known for their high levels of formality and this is punctuated in the form of lead singer Lias Saudi, who skulks on stage in a shabby suit, which is complemented by the two cans of Guinness he cradles in each hand. All the time he eerily gazes upon the crowd, intensely glaring at some with those black voids some may call eyes. Opening with the quavering ‘Tinfoil Deathstar’, the band set the agenda for the evening with a track rich in agitated licks and haunting vocals, which is followed by Saudi’s first venture into the crowd. Yes, the first.
Finding a genre in which to tag the band with is near impossible. Country, punk, rock, it’s all there. As is the variation in the crowd, which jumps from the 50-year-old fanatic, who you’d do well to avoid a foot in the face from, to the average student. Fat White Family excel in their ability to turn songs, which on the album sound relatively sombre, into instruments that incite undiluted chaos. It’s not only the crowd that are unable to restrain themselves. During a particularly raucous rendition of ‘Auto Neutron’, Saudi truly ventures into his feral side, contorting upon the floor while lurching into torrents of screams. The rest of the band stand motionless, completely depleted of anything resembling human emotion.
Saudi also moves to highlight some of his own musical preferences, and is the only time he shifts from his cryptic persona, when halfway through he addresses a member of the crowd, saying, “Take that Slaves t-shirt off. I’m not fucking about.”
The lo-fi production of their albums, which sometimes heavily reduces the clarity of vocals, is not evident in their live performance. ‘Is It Raining in Your Mouth’ certainly benefits from this, with Saudi’s sexually taunting lyrics having no trouble in resonating around the loaded venue. Guitarists Saul Adamczewski and Adam J Harmer successfully combine to fabricate delicate patterns of noise on ‘I Am Mark E Smith’, which help to juxtapose the macabre depictions of sexual acts that embody the song.
The Brixtoners saunter through the rest of a set that includes the repulsive ‘Cream of the Young’, which doesn’t really need an introduction, and the politically tinged ‘Goodbye Goebbels’ that offers a twisted insight to Hitler’s thoughts. A truly frenzied version of the filth-drenched ‘Touch The Leather’ encaptures what makes the band so appealing right now, and is a prime advertisement for why their live spectacles are held in such high regard.