Future of the Left - Travels With Myself and Another

Future of the Left - Travels With Myself and Another
album review for clash

Welsh post-hardcore trio Future Of The Left, who were formed from the ashes of Jarcrew and mclusky, released a near-faultless debut LP in 2007 with Curses. Its thrilling energy and bizarrely hilarious lyrics are qualities retained by the follow-up, Travels With Myself And Another, if not quite so consistently. But it's impossible not to love tracks like Stand By Your Manatee, where frontman Falco revels in retelling an "awful truth" that's really a playground taunt; and Lapsed Catholics, where Falco's meandering spoken intro describes Sky News as a "hysterical gung-ho technicolour crapfest". Travels... is certainly no crapfest, but it is both hysterical and gung-ho, in much better senses than Falco meant.

7.5/10

Future Of The Left (Live)

Live review for The Skinny

future of the left @ glasgow barfly, 6 dec (****)

The new project of former Mclusky and Jarcrew members, Future Of The Left released an exhilarating debut album in October that flew under too many radars. Curses was a record of ludicrous thoughts snarled by Andy Falkous's tongue-in-cheek, over chugging punk guitarwork, and bent into the kind of melodic shape that Fugazi and the Pixies first conjured. The Barfly is tiny, so we can feel the jocular aggression like welcoming heat from a fire, every song bristling with manic tension and playful hooks that beg to be yelped with glee: “Colin is a pussy, a very pretty pussy!”, “s-s-s-sausage on a stick, yeeaah!”, and so on. It makes no sense at all, yet it also makes no sense that Future Of The Left are still playing such wee venues for wee crowds. If a band this good can’t at least book out the Barrowlands, there really is no Future.