Fat White Family, Electric Ballroom

Headline-grabbing South London band Fat White Family flash their uncouth rock 'n' roll at the Electric Ballroom this September.

If you’re seeking to escape the well-mannered neo-folk that dominates the gigging circuit these days; the Johnny Flynns and Stornoways of this world, Fat White Family provide the perfect antidote. They’re carnal, they’re deeply unpleasant. But they’ve been creating quite the media sensation. 

So what is it about Fat White Family that appeals to The Guardian, The Telegraph, GQ - and the BBC, who cautiously broadcast their Glastonbury performance; severe parental warnings firmly in place.

Their music isn’t particularly original; it fluidly skates from scuzzy garage rock to bluesy Americana to krautrock. The south London band are referential but never reverential—and that’s what’s so refreshing about them. In a music scene dominated by polite, sanitized bands, Fat White Family curse and spit, play naked or in drag. They embrace altered states of being.

And over the past year Fat White Family have deployed a barrage of shock tactics designed to grab the public’s attention. (Ironically, they’re the kind of antics guaranteed to send potential PRs into a state of catatonia) They’ve started a label called Without Consent and they’ve been banned from playing at Somerset House—probably because they’ve been known to pleasure themselves onstage and once even (accidentally) hit a vegan in the audience with the head of a pig. When Maggie Thatcher died, the band made the front page of the Independent; they’d unspooled a banner from the window of their digs that read “The B*tch Is Dead”.

 If Maggie could hear their lascivious lyrics, she’d be rolling over in her grave. The refrain on the oafish 'Raining In Your Mouth' (from their debut album Champagne Holocaust) goes “I was born to have it and you were born to take it / Five sweaty fingers on my dashboard.” “Cream of the Young”, an enervating, bluesy number moans, “I’m aching for you baby, your 15-year-old tongue”. So Fat White Family sing about sex, all kinds of sex. Appropriately then, they ran a night for some time at the pub underneath their flat called Slide-In. Entry was £5 or “free if you’re on the dole”.

Fat White Family are doing things their in their own, deeply sordid way. It’s a strategy that’s seeing them go up in the world. Tickets to their gig at the Electric Ballroom (a venue small enough that you’ll be able to see genitalia should it become visible) are going for £11. Don’t bring the kids.