Serfs Up!

Up until their third album, the allure of squat rock degenerates Fat White Family was as much about the unsavoury whiff of their lifestyle as it was the substance of their music. For all the ribald tales of debauchery and on-stage antics, they hadn’t quite delivered an album that lived up to their infamy. The band trailed Serfs Up! as their “slick pop album” and — as far as can be expected from a group whose song subjects have included serial killing GP Harold Shipman — that was what they delivered. Songs such as “Feet,” “Tastes Good With The Money” and “Fringe Runner” served up their dispatches from the murky depths of human nature within a delicious stew of sleazy disco rock, lascivious glam, warped electro and lounge lizard Bowie-isms. Whether they can get it together to make a follow-up remains to be seen, but Serfs Up! is rock’s subversive underbelly at its gleefully depraved best.