Family Fodder
released two extremely obscure but oddly delightful albums in the early '80s,
Monkey Banana Kitchen
and
All Styles
. With the blessing of the loose-knit London-based group's leader (and sole constant member),
Alig Pearce
, the New York indie
Dark Beloved Cloud
gathered the best of those two discs, plus some singles and previously unreleased tracks, onto the 16-track
Savoir Faire: The Best of Family Fodder
. Kicking off with the title track, a brilliant organ-based
pop
song with bilingual verses sung by
Dominique Levillain
, the album proceeds to try to encapsulate this collective's curiously wide-ranging pursuits (that album wasn't called
for nothing), but ends up sticking mostly to the group's quirky
songs rather than its
dub
or
musique concrete
experiments. Of course, it takes a certain artistic fearlessness to cover
Blondie
(a weird and ultimately unsuccessful deconstruction of
"Sunday Girl"
with coy electronically processed vocals and a middle eight sung by a child),
Franz Schubert
, and
Erik Satie
(done inna
reggae
stylee, yet) on the same album. ~ Stewart Mason