Comedy isn’t hard because it takes talent to be funny (any idiot can crack a good joke), but because you can’t tell the same joke all the time. Look at the “character stand-up” technique, where comedians craft a persona that marches through a recollection of their daily troubles. Maybe the novelty of the larger-than-life invention is a riot the first time, but a year later you just feel drained in their presence. A Bill Burr or Stavros Halkias is hard to come by because they lack all narcissism; they’re just genuine people who are good at observing and communicating what they experience to an audience, all while allowing themselves to be the punchline. They don’t really tell jokes, they just remain honest about the world they inhabit – that they’re really funny at that is almost by accident, so effortless is their craft. They also don’t care if you laugh at them or not, they just do their thing.
Now, if one guy has been doing “his thing”, it’s Andy Falkous. The vocalist and guitarist of Mclusky has been making music for nearly 30 years now – that’s a lot of time. After a falling out with bassist Jonathan Chapple in 2004 – if memory serves right, the two had a massive fight after some of the band’s gear was stolen (I might be wrong) – Falkous abandoned the band name, hired Kelson Mathias of Jarcrew and continued as Future of the Left, pretty much exactly where Mclusky left off. This new outfit went through various line-up changes, until releases eventually diminished. Falkous decided to play a few shows of Mclusky material and sort of, kind of, reclaimed the band name, and now – with regular drummer Jack Egglestone and Welsh bassist Damien Sayell – recorded a comeback album. So this is how we got here.
Falkous is confronted with a thankless task – “Shut up and play the hits!” He’s the sole founding member of Mclusky remaining – splitting with Chapple originally seemed the main reason for kicking the band name to the curb. Egglestone joined in 2003 and stuck around for all of Future of the Left, and the lineup of the latter kept morphing anyway, so is reclaiming Mclusky a financial decision, or fueled by nostalgia, or just frustration with The Future Of The Left? It’s been 20 years since the split, the last few albums Falkous helmed just trudged along. Telling jokes a fifth or sixth time just won’t work, so why resurrect Mclusky again, risking to fall victim to the boomer-rock trap the very band’s “colagen rock” made fun of? Also, why is that album cover so much worse than the iconic OG ones? To be fair, it’s also the first new Falkous material we’ve got in… nine years? Jesus…
I’m bloviating, which is the very thing Falkous hates most from critics. No bullshit, no jokes: this new Mclusky album is probably the best from the caustic Welshman we’ve got since 2009’s Travels with Myself and Another. Falkous is (almost) 50, and you can kind of hear the wear and tear now, but he’s still a competent noise rock band leader. While the edge of Steve Albini – who engineered the second and third Mclusky albums masterfully – is absent, the songs still have a lot of guttural punch and earthy charm.
The songs are also good. “Unpopular Parts of a Pig” is a great opener and I appreciate how riotous Falkous still sounds this late into his career. “Way of the Exploding Dickhead” has an incredible riff and could pass as an outtake from The Difference Between Me And You is that I’m not on Fire, their best and most adventurous album – “Kafka-esque novelist Franz Kafka” falls into the same category. “People Person” has some of that glorious Jesus Lizard edge, and “Hate the Polis” got a chuckle out of me with its reference to the “Wild Thing” riff.
This is riotous and to the point. Future of the Left had mostly explored experimentation as they went on. So maybe Mclusky’s return is synonymous with a new quest for minimalism. The lyrics, for the most part, are fine – nothing sticks out to me as especially iconic or rivalling the band’s most brilliant moments of dark cynicism and surreal wit, but they also don’t seem awkward or barren (something The Plot Against Common Sense was accused of). This is a likeable and wholly solid noise rock album, and a more than serviceable comeback.
But there’s one factor that demands to be addressed: the passing of time. The world is still here and so are we is the title of the record, but the world it’s borne into has changed since 2004. A lot of bands have come – and gone – since, and noise rock itself has found a new gestalt. Couch Slut, Chat Pile, Daughters, there are so many bands that have further pushed the boundaries of sonic assault and found almost clinically perverse dark humour in their angles on approaching grim subjects.
Of course this isn’t arguing against Mclusky’s comeback, but it highlights that Falkous is not as risky, gutsy or toxic as he was in 2004, when the group disbanded. “Your Children are Waiting for You to Die”, “Slay!” and “Lucky Jim” were genuinely scary songs, and there’s tons of examples where lyrics would enter shocking territory. (“She Will Only Bring You Happiness” lives in infamy for being a radio single so toxic, it likely offended all the right people.)
Yes, Mclusky are still here, but they’ve returned to the well balanced noise rock of their debut, My Pain and Sadness is more Sad and Painful than Yours, where things aren’t quite as thrilling as on Do Dallas and The Difference Between…. Maybe that’s because Future of the Left already explored that direction enough, maybe it’s because Falkous just wants to go “back to basics”, maybe it’s because he fucking felt like it this time, and the next will blow it out of the water. I don’t know, I don’t care, this is a good album. It doesn’t make me laugh, but it reminds me of being young and dangerous and I hope it did the same for Falko. Now, shut up and play the hits!
