A spate of vinyl reissues has brought welcome attention to Family Fodder more than 30 years after they formed, and their eclectic music sounds as engagingly fresh, naive, and wise, as ever.
 
Legend has it that Family Fodder frequently used a parlor game approach to songwriting. This technique sought to encourage spontaneity and happy accidents. Thus, after someone had spent five minutes on a lyric, it would be passed to the person on the right. This would continue, with responsibility for musical direction similarly shifting, until a piece was complete. Then it would be recorded with no revision. Whether or not this actually occurred on a regular basis, the group’s Euro-punk-folk, Afro-psychedelia, communal, voice-centered music is a remarkably consistent and endearing hybrid.
Just Love Songs is a limited edition, vinyl-only, release, which strips 11 of the group’s tunes down to their loveliest state. The first two of these give a clear indication of the variety in this collection. The sawing, cello-led, gnawing, dirge love mantra of "The Onliest Thing" gives way to breezy nostalgia on "Hippy Bus To Spain" (which resembles how I imagine Young Marble Giants might sound if they were stuck in a phase obsessed equally by Tropicalia and Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday movie). Fuzz guitar is interjected here and there, most splendidly on end track "Don’t Get Me High" which might be the most polite sounding psychedelic track ever. "Primeval Pony" features the very alluring singing of Darlini Sing-Kaul, adult daughter of original Fodder vocalist Dominque Levillan, and sounds happily nonsensical enough to be a definite product of the Instant Songwriting technique, or an early Tyrannosaurus Rex composition.
The original group broke up in 1983 but have reformed numerous times around mainstay Alig Fodder. His singing on "Whatever Happened to David Ze" is suitably sombre, yet light (as nothing gets rammed down anyone’s throat on a Family Fodder recording) for a lovely reflection of the murdered Angolan political activist and musician. I suppose it would be great if Family Fodder became feted as post-punk legends, and suitably rewarded, but they are much less likely to stand still long enough for that to happen as they are to write a song charmingly taking the piss out of the very notion.
 
 
 
 
 
 
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