Fat White Family’s Lias Saoudi: ‘I went on this night out that lasted 17 years’

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “I’m thinking of maybe quitting the band, quitting music and trying to become a food critic, the new Jay Rayner,” the Fat White Family frontman half-jokes down Zoom from the Domino Records offices. “Maybe that would be the truly subversive thing for me to do next – to try and get AA Gill’s old job at The Times.” Saoudi’s Saturday routine column might make Gregg Wallace look well-adjusted. You just can’t function for that long on that wavelength and still make sense to each other.” open image in gallery The band are certainly greeting the release of their evolved, exploratory and occasionally deeply shocking fourth album ‘Forgiveness Is Yours’ in a state of flux Meanwhile, Saoudi also fell out with his brother and bandmate Nathan over who should sing on Nathan’s composition “Work”, a psychedelic electropop ode to wage slavery. open image in gallery Saoudi, who says he is now more clean-living ‘by a long stretch’ than he was pre-pandemic, crowdsurfs during a 2019 gig in London He rails against the obsession in the “indie microverse” for post-punk uniformity: “This is what authenticity means now, it means speaking in your own accent over angular guitars.” Bring up his recent beef with Idles and he doubles down: “I don’t mind bands being dull or whatever, fair enough, but when you’re grandstanding on that woke ticket I just find that anathema to what rock’n’roll really is, which is the reprobates.