There’s a song on here called ‘Stand By Your Manatee’. I think that alone justifies this album’s position, but if for some reason you need more reason then read on by all means:
Cardiff’s Future of the left formed following the collapse (I think I’m legally obliged to use the phrase ‘from the ashes’) of the criminally underappreciated McClusky back in 2005 and, to put it frankly, they make the kind of rock music that puts nearly every other guitar band in Britain to shame.
While FOTL’s debut album was undoubtedly impressive in parts its spiky guitars and angular rhythms were still unmistakeably the work of two thirds of McClusky, and as a result it struggled somewhat to establish its own identity as the work of great band in its own right as opposed to just a very good side project. Their second album comprehensively does away with any such concerns though, fleshing out their sound marvellously and presenting a strong case for the band to be considered, at least potentially, as one of the most important in Britain.
Musically FOTL are a thrilling mixture of the dumbest visceral jolts of heavy metal and the high-brow artiness, complex song structures and jagged rhythms of post-punk, while all the while still writing tunes that your postman could still whistle as he contemplated his next strike. The sheer joy the band exhibit in making music that’s frequently leftfield and yet never loses sight of the mosh-pit (FOTL are one of those delightfully archaic bands that’s naïve enough to believe that making music their fans may actually enjoy may not be an entirely bad thing), plus the fact that they’re savvy enough to realise that if something’s worth taking serious it’s also worth making a joke out of, positions the band as probably the closest thing this country has produced to the brain-frazzling brilliance of System of a Down, the difference being that those uncultured, stupid and irony-unacquainted Americans have made SOAD one of the biggest bands in the country while Britain’s indifference toward Future of the Left means they’d struggle to sell out their own front room.Lyrically though, FOTL are simply on a different plane to most of their peers. Singer Andy Falkous can write words that are at once hilarious, profound, nonsensical, crude, sad, joyous, obtuse, blunt, unflinchingly honest and scathingly sarcastic, and proof to any budding songwriters out there that there is some middle ground between meaningless pseudo-emotional guff (‘I climbed the mountain and saw that the storm was too pure/ I need to see your eyes to fly back to the shore’) and over-earnest eulogies on ‘serious’ issues (where every song has to mention a non-specific group of people who ‘Got no home’). Any writer who can wittily articulately deconstruct such diverse subjects as rampant consumerism (‘Drink Nike’), Rupert Murdoch (‘Lapsed Catholics’) and the mundane nature of evil (‘You Need Satan More Than He Needs You’), while never losing track of how important it is to open a song with a line as good as ‘Slight bowel movements/ Preceded the bloodless coup’ deserves all the praise he gets
Cardiff’s Future of the left formed following the collapse (I think I’m legally obliged to use the phrase ‘from the ashes’) of the criminally underappreciated McClusky back in 2005 and, to put it frankly, they make the kind of rock music that puts nearly every other guitar band in Britain to shame.
While FOTL’s debut album was undoubtedly impressive in parts its spiky guitars and angular rhythms were still unmistakeably the work of two thirds of McClusky, and as a result it struggled somewhat to establish its own identity as the work of great band in its own right as opposed to just a very good side project. Their second album comprehensively does away with any such concerns though, fleshing out their sound marvellously and presenting a strong case for the band to be considered, at least potentially, as one of the most important in Britain.
Musically FOTL are a thrilling mixture of the dumbest visceral jolts of heavy metal and the high-brow artiness, complex song structures and jagged rhythms of post-punk, while all the while still writing tunes that your postman could still whistle as he contemplated his next strike. The sheer joy the band exhibit in making music that’s frequently leftfield and yet never loses sight of the mosh-pit (FOTL are one of those delightfully archaic bands that’s naïve enough to believe that making music their fans may actually enjoy may not be an entirely bad thing), plus the fact that they’re savvy enough to realise that if something’s worth taking serious it’s also worth making a joke out of, positions the band as probably the closest thing this country has produced to the brain-frazzling brilliance of System of a Down, the difference being that those uncultured, stupid and irony-unacquainted Americans have made SOAD one of the biggest bands in the country while Britain’s indifference toward Future of the Left means they’d struggle to sell out their own front room.Lyrically though, FOTL are simply on a different plane to most of their peers. Singer Andy Falkous can write words that are at once hilarious, profound, nonsensical, crude, sad, joyous, obtuse, blunt, unflinchingly honest and scathingly sarcastic, and proof to any budding songwriters out there that there is some middle ground between meaningless pseudo-emotional guff (‘I climbed the mountain and saw that the storm was too pure/ I need to see your eyes to fly back to the shore’) and over-earnest eulogies on ‘serious’ issues (where every song has to mention a non-specific group of people who ‘Got no home’). Any writer who can wittily articulately deconstruct such diverse subjects as rampant consumerism (‘Drink Nike’), Rupert Murdoch (‘Lapsed Catholics’) and the mundane nature of evil (‘You Need Satan More Than He Needs You’), while never losing track of how important it is to open a song with a line as good as ‘Slight bowel movements/ Preceded the bloodless coup’ deserves all the praise he gets
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