After a cataclysmic period of addiction, rehab and eventual sobriety, former Fat White Family member, Saul Adamczewski, has had a haphazard journey toward his new project, Insecure Men. Despite the bumpy road that has led him to his new synth-pop destination, the Peckham resident now appears eager to challenge and to provoke listeners.
They appear eager to challenge and provoke listeners
Formed alongside Childhood vocalist, Ben Romans-Hopcraft, it is hard not to compare the supergroup to the satire of Adamczewski’s previous group, with the delicate vocals of the lead singer ensuring the topics of lust in songs like ‘Cliff Has Left The Building’ resonate with an air of dark humour. In a similar juxtaposition, the woozy guitars of the opening ‘Subaru Nights’ conjures images of beauty, a feature that becomes exaggerated in the lyrical chanting of the songs second half. This devious lyrical binary continues in ‘All Women Love Me’, where Adamczewski references forced labour camps of Stalin’s Russia through the symbol of food that is going cold. In ‘Mekong Glitter’, Adamczewski moves uses the darker synth sound that made the Fat White Family tracks so sonically challenging.
There are also some signs of genuine concern in the band’s lyrics. ‘Whitney Houston and I’ is a four-minute debate on crack addiction which draws a parallel between the soul singer and her daughter. This subject matter is made more haunting with the accompaniment of the ‘Honey Hahs’, an all-children choir that attempt a metaphorical answer to the cures of addiction.
Nonetheless, what makes this LP superior to Adamczewski previous work with the Fat White’s is that this demanding content never feels saturated at the expense of scaremongering a potentially mainstream audience.