Future of the Left

Travels With Myself and Another

(4AD)

Record Review by Adam McKibbin

Andy Falkous and Future of the Left go right for the throat on Travels With Myself and Another, one of the very best high-volume albums of 2009.  Showing precious little dropoff from his years in the critically adored but generally underappreciated Mclusky, Falkous fires bon mots while the band gleefully bashes through its second album.  Falkous and drummer Jack Egglestone may still be motivated by Mclusky not having achieved a broader reach – or perhaps the opposite is true, and they feel a responsibility to the fans who did find them and consider them heroes.  Maybe neither is true.  Whatever the case, Travels crackles with an us-vs-them urgency that’s much more typical among younger, unproven bands.   

They rip into “Arming Eritrea” to start off the album, a song that starts out with stripped-down force before kicking into overdrive with a post-rock wall-of-sound crescendo (then alternating between the two).  It’s the album’s biggest, fist-pumpiest anthem, and makes for a bold way to launch Travels.  Once they’re going, they don’t stop for many breathers; to me, “Land Of My Formers” is the only static track of the dozen, and it’s not because of lack of energy or conviction (it just seems a little too… ordinary compared to the rest of its surroundings).   

FOTL still have a way with titles.   “The Hope That House Built” suggests some of the naiveté and faith-over-fact decision-making that inflated the housing bubble and helped push the global economy off a cliff.  The track marches forward with militant terseness to the music, but Falkous has good news:  “In the end, everybody wins.”  There’s theatricality to the call-and-response lyrics, and Falkous vamps it up vocally as he gets to the root of the problem, reimagining God as a mental illness and wondering “How could we go wrong with supernatural creatures who control our fate?”

An equal opportunity basher, Falkous turns his attention to devil worshippers on “You Need Satan More Than He Needs You,” a funny character study of a Satanist confronted with being caught out in the rain:  “Yeah, sure, Satan rules, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be practical!” the protagonist grouses defensively.  The trio prowls along the low-end like they’re trying to blow out your speakers (or eardrums), and the shout-along chorus is surely one of the year’s more enjoyable.  By the time Falkous reaches the fiery conclusion of this particular rumination, he sounds like a cross between old-school Zach de la Rocha and Black Francis discovering that Gahhhhhhhd is seven.  Awesome.