Ex-Fat White Family guitarist Alex Sebley fights his demons with blasted pop.
Alex Sebley has been through a lot: he was part of the crazy and great Fat White Family, left the band in a fight, was addicted to heroin and broke. The fact that with his new project Pregoblin (named after the painkiller Pregabalin that Sebley used as a heroin substitute) he is now presenting such a life-affirming album full of pop hits is anything but self-evident.
Everything on the somewhat confusingly titled debut PREGOBLIN II sounds big, majestic, and is richly produced in the best sense of the word: gospel choirs and disco strings on “Everybody’s Ill” exist quite naturally alongside the 2000s indie guitars of “These Hands AKA Danny the Knife”. Another notoriously broken figure in British pop music is a guest here: Peter Doherty, on whose label the album is also released, lets a touch of libertine waft into the otherwise rather guitar-poor world of Pregoblin.
Every song is a hit and bombastic production – and yet this is anything but a smooth pop album. Nothing here is just beautiful, but also always worn out and latently tired of life. The fragility of Alex Sebley’s voice and the songs, despite their catchiness, are always skewed are what make PREGOBLIN II unique.
You can find out which albums were released in February 2024 via our monthly release list.