A review by jnzllwgr
Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure by Adelle Stripe, Lias Saoudi

4.0

This started with a bang and then there came a whimper, unfortunately. I love the Fat White Family’s music. The craft of Stripe’s text is excellent. Lias Saoudi’s diaristic entries are absolutely the best. He truly is a master of his language and a turn of phrase. That said, the drug-addled band’s escapades are pretty well known and documented. This gives additional dimension to all of that trauma — and, if the words can be trusted, these men’s tolerance for abusing their bodies (and surviving) may not have a rival. Talk about imprinting some serious damage at a cellular level. But as the book tore through their whirlwind of a pre-covid life and career, I was left with the profound absence of any method to the madness. Sure, they were pissed off at society, enfants terrible, weighted by mental disorder and family trauma. And yet, they clearly are/were a) whip-smart and b) had some important, conscious motivations for how they made music. Very little of this is (substantively) explored. The music is really just small moments connecting the binges of smack, gear, liquor, ketamine, hash, pills, etc. And it’s not like they are the first to have told this story. Given Lias’ art school background (and Saul’s come to think of it), you’d think explaining how the output for these 21st C. ‘wreckers of civilization’ came to take its final form might be more of a worthy investment. Instead we have nihilism and chemically stunted personas in the foreground. They’re just too good for that to be the end all. I’m treating this as a ‘Vol. 1’ of an ongoing, evolving career that hopes to keep us all at the edge of our seats for decades to come.