Covers bands are the Globe’s meat and drink, but John Francis Flynn, here supporting Fat White Family, 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.
Gripping the mic stand with eyes closed, Flynn has the intimidating stature of the late Mark Lanegan, who lived in County Kerry during his last few years. Drawing on drones, tape manipulation and subtle electronic effects, he sings of painful memories and drinking blood like wine. Cosy, twee, fireside folk this is not.
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 handed down from generation to generation; Flynn is a respectful yet innovative custodian, allowing the past to speak through (and to) the present.
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. Founder member Lias Saoudi called the creative process behind latest album Forgiveness Is Yours “a nonstop fucking argument”; the Metro claimed 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, sporting charity-shop trousers, mullets, waistcoats and berets, launching into John Lennon.
Confession time: I’m here half hoping for a car crash. For all FWF’s combustibility and volatility, and rabidly enthusiastic reports of feral live shows, prior encounters have only ever left me with the feeling they’re going through the motions, as curiously unsatisfying as their albums. That tonight will be different is immediately evident. The band are on furious (and remarkably coherent) form, but Saoudi is the bare-torsoed barometer: an Iggy Pop-like conductor of ceremonies, roaming around in the crowd by third song Tinfoil Deathstar.
Admittedly, appearing onstage in a Legends Of The Fall T-shirt and 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. Forgiveness Is Yours’ standout track Today You Become Man 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 (about “when I was a Scientologist”, claims Saoudi), 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 is 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, bright and brilliant before the (surely inevitable) burnout.
Fat White Family + John Francis Flynn, The Globe, Cardiff, Mon 10 June
words BEN WOOLHEAD photos SIMON AYRE