Future of the Left
Travels With Myself and Another
4AD
By Jose Fritz
It’s a comfort to me as an aging miscreant malcontent that this kind of sentiment still exists in music. Not everything has to be sloppy and rushed or even smeared in snot-nosed punk rock rawness. In the 1980s we had a number of very sad bands in the “joke-thrash” sub genre. They were trying to tap into that flippant immaturity endemic to punk rock but they couldn’t pull it off: they mostly looked like retards in ladies wigs. I like to think it was an honest attempt, but once you take yourself seriously, you can’t go back. Andy "Falco" Falkous never made that misstep, and still miraculously in his early 30s, still holds onto the real thing.
Falkous woos music critics like Cassanova. He says the things we only think of while walking out the back of the bar after the argument. I don’t mean those razor sharp witty retorts, I mean the bumbling drooling excuses you say to the police while your spread eagle against the hood of the police cruiser while being arrested for public indecency. Allow me to quote from the book of Falkous, Album 2, track 2: “I know it only happened ‘cause I couldn’t stop drinking. It only happened ‘cause I couldn’t drink more.”
The Future of the Left is not Mclusky. It has a couple things in common, notably vocalist Falkous and drummer Jack Egglestone. The new man is Kelson Mathias, the former keyboardist for the prog rock band Jarcrew who brings in a noisy wall of synth that makes each song simultaneously more poppy and more abrasive. Jarcrew was both of those things but Jarcrew pandered, the overdubbed vocal harmonies undid everything else. Falkous knows better than that. This is the man that sang “Lightsaber Cocksucking Blues.” He is without peer, a god among men. Men of faith fear his mighty sideburns. I quote again from the book of Falkous, Album 2, track 4: “Slight bowel movements preceded the bloodless coup. Though no one must know it, I am at fault.”
Their debut LP Curses came out less than a year ago, only in September of 2008. Since then they’ve put out a live album, Last Night I Saved Her from Vampires, and five singles with exclusive tracks. The word “prolific” does not begin to describe this band. They seem to be an inexhaustible rock n’ toll machine, filled with boundless virility. This is where I’d normally slip in a dick joke but nothing comes to mind. Really though, after the band records a song like “You Need Satan More Than He Needs You” where is there to go? What well of comedy is left untapped? When Falkous sings “Yeah sure, Satan rules but that doesn’t mean I can’t be practical.” What else is there to say?
|
