Rising phoenix-like from the ashes of mclusky, one of the decade’s finest and most-missed bands, noisy bastards Future of the Left made one of the albums of last year and look well set to continue that form. AU met them in Dublin to gauge their progress.
Words by Chris Jones
We’re in the foyer of Future of the Left’s Dublin hotel on the day of their first ever Irish show, and the three men take the opportunity to put some potential misconceptions to bed.
“We’re probably the most non-rock and roll band ever,” says bass player Kelson Mathias, the Cardiff band’s only actual Welshman. “People come up to us after shows and try to take us to clubs. Bastards.”
“We just want to go home and have a read,” says softly-spoken drummer Jack Egglestone.
Frontman Andy Falkous: “Have a beer, maybe talk to people by the merch stand until about half one, and then I’ve got to get to bed early because I want to go to the gym the next morning. Not fall asleep like I did last night watching QI. This is not a life of rebellion against the status quo.”
Kelson adds cheerily, “If anything, we tidy the hotels we stay in, instead of trashing them. We make them a little bit more comfortable.”
No sleepless nights for the staff and residents of the Paramount Hotel this weekend, then. They might be forgiven for fearing the worst if they’ve heard any of the band’s music, or that of their parent bands, Jarcrew in Kelson’s case and, especially, Andy and Jack’s mclusky. If they might live in blissful ignorance of the bands’ – and, in particular, Andy’s – reputation, though, the same cannot be said for the fans.
With an especially long line in riotous gigs, eyebrow-raising song titles (‘Fuck The Countryside Alliance’, ‘Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues’), hilariously provocative lyrics (altogether now, “all of your friends are cunts / your mother is a ballpoint pen thief” – mclusky, ‘Gareth Brown Says’) and onstage put-downs in the bank, Andy has built a reputation as a musical maverick, a man whose talent for thrillingly noisy post-punk is more than matched by his corrosive way with words. What this means, of course, is that he has built a particularly obsessive fanbase; people whose mental image of him is somewhat at odds with his real-life personality. Today, he is softly-spoken, polite and funny. Onstage tonight, and even more so in mclusky days, he’s a whole other animal. It’s not difficult to see where the confusion might lie.
“It’s just a natural reaction when people hear the music, I suppose,” says Andy. “There’s probably something in it. It doesn’t relate to everyday life, otherwise you’d end up getting angry with your clothes at one in the morning, or getting annoyed with the door and setting fire to it, or you’d write a song about the inconveniences of breathing. The disadvantage of it is that, generally speaking, about 30 to 40% of the people who come to speak to me after shows are fucking proper psychos.”
It’s as if onstage Andy is a character, in a way divorced from everyday Andy. “You’re almost like a cartoon,” he says, “because it’s very difficult to be a multi-dimensional character when you’re playing rock music. It’s not a study in nuance, rock music. It tends to be fairly full-on. But I think that’s true of all of us. People assume you’re just some loud guy in a band.”
On record, he is an extremely loud guy in a band. Following the untimely demise of mclusky in January 2005 after bass player Jon Chapple left under a cloud, Andy and Jack teamed up with Kelson and Hywel Evans from fellow south Wales ruffians Jarcrew in what would eventually – minus Evans – become Future of the Left. The debut album, ‘Curses’, appeared last Autumn and proved – to the relief of many – that all was not lost; that mclusky wasn’t the end and that Falco, as he is often known, was still the borderline genius we all knew he was.
Though Andy admits that the album is “perhaps not doing as well as it should”, the critical response – as with mclusky’s three albums and posthumous compilation – among the leftfield music press has been good. What has changed this time around is that the NME have latched onto the band. mclusky were notoriously ignored by almost the entire mainstream music press in Britain. It must be a strange thing to deal with.
“Yeah, it’s been really surreal,” says Andy. “At this moment in time, it hasn’t really made much of a difference to anything approaching record sales.”
“Or even show attendance,” Kelson interjects. “Two guys came to our show in Oxford, and they said, “We saw you in the NME, and we thought we’d be standing right at the back.” And they were, like, right at the front. So yeah, I mean it’s nice to be in there – we’re not complaining – but it’s not changing anything.”
“Not at this stage,” says Andy. “Everybody who works in the music industry always says that it tends to make a difference when everything happens at the same time. You need that support from the NME and/or Kerrang!, depending on which particular demographic you happen to appeal to, you need radio play, you need tour support, everything needs to hit at the same time. With bands on big labels, that’s when you see the huge inflation of people at shows. Whereas, with us, it’s happening in a very piecemeal way. I mean, crowds at shows are getting bigger, but with mclusky, our last London show was nearly 800 people. That was a few years in the making.”
Posted on: August 12, 2008
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