Fat White Family release new single 'Work', a hurtling electronic triumph that transports the spirit of Moroder to the heart of South London.
The track is the latest to be taken from their forthcoming opus, Forgiveness Is Yours, which is released this Friday (April 26) on Domino. The single is accompanied by a video directed by CC Wade which tells a tale of obsession and a man’s relentless desire for greatness to the detriment of his life, his body and his sanity.
Talking about the track and video Lias Saoudi said: “This tune and lyric was written by Nathan Saoudi, with a little help from the indomitable Jess Winter. It became a bit of nightmare in production, like, serious graft. Anyway, it’s one of Brian Destiny’s best. The idea for the video came from watching Rocky IV on the telly at our family xmas. Nothing brings people together quite like Rock IV. The way Stallone single handedly brings down the Soviet Union. We can all learn something form that. I enjoyed it so much I started binging on Rocky films in January.”
Listen to ‘Work’ by Fat White Family on the Liverpool Official Playlist on Spotify.
Lias continues: “Most of the other ones are s**t, but there’s a scene in the third one – Rock III – where Rock has to accept he’s lost it, grown decadent, delusional, flaccid…Apollo Creed (RIP) has to drag his arse to LA to train him back up the old way, the hard way, the way it USED to be…Between both of these lessons one might learn everything needs to about life, about ambition, about success being nothing more than failure in drag…C C Wade were the obvious choice to direct this homage. They are truth. They are two people that allow whatever their working on to absorb them entirely. There is no limit at Haus C C Wade. No ceiling. No basement. No ledge. All in.”
Forgiveness Is Yours is the most sophisticated, vital and flamboyant creation of the band’s career. Like everything they’ve done it has pushed them to the limits not only of their creative talent, but of their health, their sanity, their very existence. To Lias Saoudi, Forgiveness Is Yours, “is about life as eternal contingency…about no longer suspecting, but knowing that this shit will never get any easier…in fact, it’s about to get a whole lot worse, your body’s going to go into decay and the people you love will slowly start dropping dead around you…but somehow, you’ve smashed enough of your expectations thus far in life, you’re sort of fine with it…you accept it”.
Its eleven tracks come on like a sideways state of the nation tirade, a bulletin of indignities chronicling times spinning wildly out of joint yet happily, for all its creators’ sufferings, Forgiveness Is Yours is an embarrassment of delights.
Lias concludes that, “The overarching aesthetic themes at work here are torpor and further torpor still.” Forgiveness Is Yours is a testament to the will to create even when catastrophes keep happening, when you’ve come out of the drug-fog long enough to realise that the damage is irreparable, all truces are fleeting, and the game was never worth the candle. Burned clear, blasted free of illusions, Forgiveness Is Yours is a quintessence of disenchantment and the bittersweet fruit of vicious, sinister times. Let’s enjoy it while we can — there’s nothing like it around.
