FAT WHITE FAMILY

Forgiveness Is Yours (Domino)

If you thought Fat White Family, a band that once compared fellatio to Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi “sucking marrow out of a bone” on an album featuring songs about dictators, Nazis and Harold Shipman, couldn’t surprise or shock any more, think again.

In the middle of the agents provocateurs’ fourth album, Forgiveness Is Yours – which opens with an impersonation of a Richard Burton character recalling a druggy summer afternoon and features perverted pop, seedy lounge-goth, lyrical reference to Right Said Fred and a track called Polygamy Is Only For The Chief – sits Today You Become Man, on which frontman Lias Saoudi recounts with wit and horror the traumatising experience of being circumcised without anaesthetic in Algeria at the age of five. Well, they do say write about what you know.

But there’s one final surprise from Fat White Family at the death: You Can’t Force It, a drunk, queasy and quite brilliant showtune that may or may not be Saoudi’s ode to departed sparring partner Saul Adamczewski.

words BEN WOOLHEAD