Fat White Family frontman Lias Saoudi has laid into IDLES, accusing them of “grandstanding on that woke ticket”.
The band have previously criticised the Bristol outfit, siding with Sleaford Mods when frontman Jason Williamson accused IDLES of “appropriating a working class voice” and said their take on politics is “cliched, patronising, insulting and mediocre”, adding that he doesn’t “like them at all”.
At the time, Saoudi said they were 100 per cent with Williamson, and added that “the last thing our increasingly puritanical culture needs right now is a bunch of self neutering middle class boobs telling us to be nice to immigrants; you might call that art, I call it sententious pedantry.”
Now, he has taken a further pop at the Bristol band yet again.
Saoudi told The Independent: “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. This is freak country. We don’t bring that kind of thing in here.”
He continued: “We’re at the end of the band era. Everything is a rehash of a rehash of a rehash. It is the vapour in the tank. People have become, essentially, like the internet… just nodes in a machine and it’s essential for the efficiency of that machine’s functionality that there’s as little friction between these nodes as possible.
“It’s everything turns into everything else and the result is nothingness. People have become streams of interchangeable code and I think the one bright side about that, if you’re a musician, is you have this ridiculous access to all of these other genres and periods. Why not just soup them all together?”
IDLES frontman Joe Talbot recently spoke to NME about their political stance.
When it was put to him that they have never been a band with a political manifesto as such, he said: “I would say that the manifesto is, ‘All is love, love is the thing’. I’ve been saying it from the start. It’s about human connection. It’s the fable of the sun and the wind: you can fucking blow as hard as you can and just keep screaming down the barrel of the gun and it ain’t gonna change shit. But if you shine and you show people compassion, you listen and you have an open heart, then maybe that connection will be made.”
“Art and music is whatever you want it to be. I also like people shouting at me and telling me I’m a prick sometimes. It’s all important,” he added. “I grew up on hip-hop, but I did not live that life – but it’s important to me and I fucking love it. My calling is what I’m doing, and I’m loving it very much so and I’m grateful to be here.”
In a more recent interview with The Independent, Talbot said that he “misses” the time when Gordon Brown was prime minister, and thinks that Keir Starmer is the “best person” to lead the country at the moment.
He also said: “If you allow people to say you’re a political band, they can throw you in the bin. They can write you off. Coming at things as a ‘political band’ and smashing that into people’s faces isn’t of interest to us because it wears people down too quickly. It makes them too defensive, especially if they’re of a different opinion to you. Our idea is to shake that person’s hand and say, let’s talk and have a conversation.”
Later this summer, IDLES are set to tour, and recently announced that Genesis Owusu, Lambrini Girls, Chalk and more would be joining them as special guests on the dates. You can purchase any remaining tickets here. They also revealed which song in their back catalogue they see as “a bad haircut” and never play live.
Meanwhile, Fat White Family recently announced a 2024 UK and European tour in support of new album ‘Forgiveness Is Yours’, which is out on April 26. You can purchase tickets to the UK dates here.
