Fat White Family

Peckham, 2011

Fat White Family began in 2011 in Peckham, south London, when Lias Saoudi and his brother Nathan met Saul Adamczewski, who had fronted the indie pop band the Metros. The three started writing in a squat and the group swelled into a six-piece. Of that original cast only Lias Saoudi has lasted the whole way; the roster behind him has been rebuilt so often that the band's membership is better described as a rota than a lineup.

The first record, Champagne Holocaust, arrived in 2013 on Trashmouth and Fat Possum, lo-fi and deliberately unpleasant, and set the terms of the band's reputation for provocation. What followed was a decade of splinter projects running alongside the main one: Warmduscher, formed in 2014; the Moonlandingz, which drew in Sean Lennon and Yoko Ono; Insecure Men, Adamczewski's vehicle from 2017; and the electronic outfit Decius. The side bands were not a distraction from Fat White Family so much as the release valve that kept it alive.

Four albums, four different bands

Songs for Our Mothers followed in 2016 on Without Consent and Fat Possum, darker and more confrontational than the debut; its closing track, Whitest Boy on the Beach, was later used in T2 Trainspotting and remains the song the band most often finish with. Serfs Up! in 2019 was their first for Domino and a deliberate swerve, trading squalor for lush production and disco rhythms, and it is still the record that gets cited when people argue the band were capable of more than noise.

Forgiveness Is Yours, released on 26 April 2024, took five years and cost them two members: Adamczewski and Nathan Saoudi both left before it was finished. NME called it their most accomplished album. Lias Saoudi spent the promotional run talking less about the songs than about survival — the in-fighting, the addiction, the sheer attrition of keeping a band going on those terms — and the record carries that weight rather than hiding it.

The catalogue now reads as four studio albums that barely sound like the same group, which is the point. Each one documents whichever version of Fat White Family happened to be standing when the tape rolled.

The split that never quite happened

In late April 2024, Metro reported that the band had broken up, citing Saoudi on a complete breakdown with the other members. Fat White Family answered on Facebook on 30 April, dismissing what they called baseless tales of implosion in the gutter press and offering a definition that has followed them ever since: "Fat Whites isn't a band. It's an idea. Like liberalism. Or tennis." People leave, the statement said, for injury, prior commitments, marital problems, depression or drug issues, and the thing itself carries on. They then played the 2024 UK and European dates, including Glastonbury, where they used their set to mock IDLES' Joe Talbot.

The diaspora kept expanding. In early 2025 Nathan Saoudi co-founded Uncle Daddy with the band's former bassist Joseph Pancucci and Richard Wilson. The current listed lineup is Lias Saoudi with Adam J. Harmer and Adam Brennan on guitars and bass, Alex White on saxophone and keyboards, Victor Jakeman on bass and Guilherme Fells on drums.

Adamczewski, returned and then removed

On 5 February 2026 Adamczewski gave an interview claiming a reconciliation was under way. He described the group as brothers who pick up exactly where they left off the moment they sit down together, wrote off Forgiveness Is Yours in blunt terms, and set out a modest ambition: one last good record and one last good year of festivals. Alongside that he talked about drone and experimental work, collaborations with Heather Leigh and Sonic Boom, visual art and theatre pieces indebted to Sarah Kane and Samuel Beckett.

That plan collapsed in the summer. On 26 August 2026 Exclaim! published accusations by two women that Adamczewski had subjected them to physical and emotional abuse, including violence, theft, isolation and controlling behaviour, with one account describing thrown bottles and resources withheld during pregnancy; the musician Jessica Winter said she had witnessed his conduct. Fat Possum stated it would no longer work with Insecure Men, his management and UK publicist both ended their association, Insecure Men tour dates were cancelled and the band's Instagram account was deactivated. The report carried no statement from Fat White Family, and the reunion record he had described in February has not materialised. He is not in the lineup now playing.

A boxing ring in Hackney Wick, and a day at Konk

The band closed 2024 with three sold-out shows at the 700-capacity Colour Factory in Hackney Wick, staged under the name Counter-Vortex 360°. The format borrowed from U2's recent in-the-round setup: a square stage in the middle of the floor, crowd pressed in on all four sides, with the promotional copy promising something impossibly intimate. On 12 December, DJ Texas Radio & The Big Bear opened. Those nights were the best argument the band had made in years for being treated as a live act first and a news story second.

Days later they went into Konk Studios in north London and recorded a set in a single day. Konk If You're Lonely: Fat White Family Live at Konk Studios came out on 12 December 2025 through Domino's Documents series: thirteen tracks spanning the whole catalogue, from Hits Hits Hits and Without Consent through Polygamy Is Only for the Chief and Tinfoil Deathstar to Whitest Boy on the Beach, plus an unreleased song, Parisian Heatwave, which the label flagged as a hint of where the band go next. It is, for now, their most recent release.

October 2026: their own rooms and someone else's arenas

The current run is split in two. In April 2026 the Strokes announced the Reality Awaits world tour, with Fat White Family among the support acts on selected European and UK dates alongside Alex Cameron — including the O2 Arena in London on 6 and 7 October, Paris on 9 October, the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam on 11 October, the PSD Bank Dome in Düsseldorf on 13 October, the Uber Arena in Berlin on 15 October, Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona on 20 October, Newcastle on 25 October, Manchester on 26 October and Dublin on 28 October. Around them the band have slotted their own club shows: Concorde 2 in Brighton on 4 October, the Fleece in Bristol on 5 October and the Classic Grand in Glasgow on 24 October.

It is an unusually stark contrast for a band of their size — a few hundred people in Bristol one night, twenty thousand people who came for someone else a fortnight later — and it follows a 2025 spent mostly in smaller rooms and on festival stages: the Eventim Apollo in April, the Shacklewell Arms in July, the Leadmill Stage at Tramlines later that month, Scala in November.