Christmas might as well be here now. The rest of December should be abolished so that we can get to the New Year quicker and back to more clement weather. However this would mean I couldn't tell you about my top 3 articles of this year by...err...me. So without further 'ado' here's my Future of the Left article from the June issue of Playmusic Pickup If there's a more articulate, passionate, sarcastic, friendly and angry man in music today than Andrew Falkous formerly of mclusky, now of Future of the Left, then I haven't met him yet. I was ridiculously terrified before this interview, yet enjoyed it muchly. All three of the band were total gentlemen (which actually isn't as rare as you might think in this business, but still). LOOK BELOW.
Sponsored By Ennui
Whether emasculating hecklers or journos, or simply looking menacing in murderous press shots, Future of the Left remain the UK’s most exciting and creative three-piece force. Here’s why – unlike a lot of other beat combos - hyperbole fits them quite nicely…
There are few more daunting moments in life than when you’ve built something up in your head and the time to face it arrives. Perhaps worse though is if that moment never arrives – it gets stolen from you and you’re left feeling angry, empty and like the tension, anxiety and excitement was for nothing.
Future Of The Left – which this writer will now take the opportunity to state as one of the best live bands he’s ever seen in this tiny little country of ours – could be furious. They could be miserable, petulant and sarcastic. They could brush off questions with sneering disdain and vicious spite. They would be well within their rights to and it would be expected and even accepted. Anyone familiar with Future of the Left’s aggressive, seething music – brutality wrapped in slabs of concrete riffs and lethal one liners – will understand. Their 2007 debut Curses was unfathomably brilliant because of the heads down cynical savagery on offer. A trio of Welsh lads renowned for metallic guitar stabs, yelled sandpaper vocals and an exceptional talent for berating hecklers at shows, they are both feared and revered by those who have heard and believe in them.
That’s why whoever decided it was a good idea to leak their record should be quaking in their very skin and bones. For it was Andrew “Falco” Falkous – mild-mannered, eloquent, intelligent, passionate in person, confrontational and terrifying on stage – who uttered on his well reasoned, if understandably disgruntled blog about the premature leaking of the band’s second album: “I'm not angry (in fact I don't blame you, unless you leaked it, in which case I WILL KILL YOU)”. He also said in the same blog post about the show they played at the “laughably bad Camden Crawl “ that “next time somebody tells me that I can't drink my rider in the building I'm playing in, I'm going to fuck them with their own shoes.” So maybe you want to take it with a pinch of salt….at your peril.
“It was more a question of giving the perspective of a band in our particular situation as opposed to the usual way its viewed in very simplistic terms as a Robin Hood good versus evil, robs from the rich gives to the poor,” explains Falco, thoughtfully, about the blog post heard around the microcosm of the UK music scene. “The people that are usually vocally opposed to downloading are the representatives of the music industry who come across in such a business-like manner that it rather alienates music fans because they have nothing in common with those people. That or you’ve got some guy from Metallica who’s just a little bit perturbed that he won’t be able to afford a second yacht that quarter.” A serious matter broken by a cheeky aside is still a serious matter.
“Having said that, it still doesn’t change the principle. I just felt it was important to show it can affect a band, not just financially, but in terms of emotionally as well. There’s always been a sense of an event about a record being released, a certain sense of the moment which is literally stolen away from you. The record is a very special thing for us and hopefully it’ll be special to a few more hundred people. Having that taken away cheapens the whole process. Some people say: ‘it’s a fact of life, get over it’ but rape and murder are facts of life. It doesn’t mean that the affects shouldn’t be addressed and doesn’t mean the morality shouldn’t be picked at and pruned.”
Amen. Read the blog opn their myspace – under the title Jim Fork - now. Let’s absorb that for a second shall we? ….. Done? Got an impression of just how the band feel? Good. We can move on then, constructively and without the ridiculous, yet justifiable, feeling that we’re dealing with the monstrous bogeymen of Welsh rock.
Travels With Myself and Another is the second record from Future of the Left and it is, quite simply, massive. Threaded with noises and ideas intended to shear inappropriate haircuts from heads and, at times, make feeling uncomfortable fun, it’s going to be pretty difficult to find a better guitar-heavy record in 2009.
“The mindset when you begin an album is a combination between some kind of sexy clamminess and cloying desperation,” announces Falco. “The thing is, we were so proud of the first album - that WE managed to record THAT - and all three of us thought it’d be very difficult, in our own terms, to better it.”
Curses is indeed a splendid record which saw people rise from their self-induced stupor after the demise of Falco and (drummer) Jack Eggleston’s band Mclusky and (bassist/backing vocalist) Kelson Mathias’ Jarcrew in 2005. They combine a twisted sense of humour, seemingly abstract yet direct lyrics, fierce screaming, harmonies, guitar and bass interplay and mighty percussion; frankly everything you’d ever want from a three-piece rock band. They still do too. Though for a time it was difficult for even the band to imagine how they could better what came before.
“Until the beginning of December, the writing had gone slowly to say the least. The benefits the hard work is bringing you aren’t always immediately apparent. The months and months of writing definitely helped us break the back of the writing, but then, all of a sudden, the songs flowed out. It happens; you work and work and work you hit a certain peak and you write a couple of songs and the pressure disappears. In the end it was a piece of piss,” reckons Falco. Still, despite the dam breaking eventually, Falco is fairly philosophical about the need for consistent hard work.
“Being in a band, the secret of writing for me, is it’s about working hard but it’s being mentally ready and open enough so, when new ideas do come up, to be able to take full advantage of them. Unfortunately there’s nothing that says if you work for x hours you write y songs. I just wish there was.”
Regardless, the quality on offer shows that whatever circumstances and factors come into the writing and recording process, something went awfully right. Whether it’s the joyous, juicy harmonies in highlight Throwing Bricks At Trains or the dramatic, drawn out synth-scourging of You Need Satan More Than He Needs You, there’s clearly what you might call progression here. The real point though is that Future of the Left have simply found more ways to stamp our heads into amusing shapes.
“They expand upon the first record and, if it was at all possible, trim off even more of the fat. Also, I remember saying at the end of December we didn’t have any keyboard songs and within two weeks we had four ready to go.”
Keyboards seemed a big deal for a lot of fans of their previous bands, with both negative and positive reactions. Was it a big deal to fit some keyboards on this record too?
“Not necessarily. Just by virtue of it being a keyboard it gives it a different sound which creates that little bit of sonic variety rather it being very dull. Interestingly, a lot of people think some of the keyboard songs are guitar songs. The songs Chin Music and Land of the Formers, for instance; a lot of people think they’re keyboard based songs and they’re not. They‘re guitar songs.” It’s here that Falco’s menacing glint appears in his eye, the invisible smirk almost forcing itself out of his very face. “I’ve seen a review of the song Yin/Post-Yin which had a reference to ‘squalling guitar feedback’ which is interesting because,” he pauses before the coup-de-grace, dropping the emphasis of his sentence to the end syllable “there are no guitars on there at all. It’s simply a keyboard. It shows years aren’t really the best judge of music at all. Maybe it sounds better written down, I don’t fucking know.”
Is it simply a case of people not listening properly? Falco looks Playmusic Pickup straight in the eye, smiling: “I’d go as far as to say that’s the answer.”
Keyboards and backing vocals may not sound revolutionary – and to suggest so would be folly nay complete stupidity, especially as they were present on Cruses – but within the context of Future of the Left, there’s definitely something to be said for these flexing of musical muscles.
“We’re all really into backing vocals in general which comes from a lifelong obsession with Queen more than anything. I’ve always self-recorded stuff that has tonnes and tonnes of backing vocals and it’s a nice way of giving the song a bit of extra lift. It does unfortunately mean that that song is gonna be quite difficult to play live,” Falco admits of Throwing Bricks At Trains. “Sometimes it is a challenge to work out how the hell you’re gonna do them justice live. We may have to loop the keyboard part as it’s impossible to sing the lead and play the keyboard but we’ll find a way because we’re intrepid young men and we refuse to face defeat.”
So could it be said that there are restrictions to the strict three piece format?
“I see it more as a pro than a con,” shrugs Kelson. “We don’t go over the top. It’s not like we put sitar and bongos and a peacock on the record.”
“There’s no backward masking or samples of crowds of Irish people baying for sectarian blood or something,” points out Falco. “It’s still doable while still staying true to the format of what a live band in general stand for.”
When not being sponsored by ennui (and yes, I know what Falco said now, I’d just never ever heard ‘ennui’ in conversation before, damn my limited knowledge of the pronunciation of French/English nouns) Future of the Left are simply getting down to the business of being in a rock band. Leaks be damned – Travels With Myself and Another is a triumph, a record merely thirty five minutes long which has more longevity than most albums which exceed that runtime. This album and the band that crafted it deserve your money and support – for the entertainment of them crucifying hecklers at shows, if nothing else. If this is selling them short, they’re used to that. None of us quite have the eloquence or grasp of the English language to do them the justice they deserve anyway. Let’s hope this helps compensate for the loss of that moment for them.
Brad Barrett
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