When I went to see Against Me! on Halloween 2007, the newly formed Future of the Left opened. Three guys in costume walked out on stage to a half empty back room upstairs in the old Birmingham Academy, berated the audience for not dressing up for the occasion and then launched into a weird synth driven song about a cat called Colin.
After powering through a set of bizarre half-joke songs in off kilter time signatures with screamed vocals and fuzz soaked bass lines the frontman angrily slagged off the audience, called us a bunch of miserable c**ts, gave us a C- grade and stomped off stage. Me and my friend turned to each other baffled, no idea what had just happened; it was fucking magnificent.
Since that first encounter I’ve seen Future of the Left seven or eight times around the country, bought (yes, actually bought) all their albums and even donated to the pledgemusic campaign to fund their last record and for my money, they are far and away one of the best live bands in the country right now. A large part of the reason for this is frontman Andy Falkous whose new solo album “I Am Scared of Everything That Isn’t Me” (under the Christian Fitness moniker) is currently available on bandcamp with plans to release a limited run of physical copies in the near future.
[quote] They are far and away one of the best live bands in the country right now[/quote]
Falkous’s furious intensity when performing live is almost legendary. During his stint as frontman of welsh alt-rock heroes Mclusky he was known for his snarky stage persona, but over the past decade with FotL he has grown into the furious on-stage warlord he is today, infamous for destroying hecklers with the speed and grace of a Don Rickles, staring wild-eyed at the crowd as he snarls and screams his way through sets and takes out targets as wide ranging as Margaret Thatcher and Reverend & the Makers (for some reason).
The real appeal of the menacing and often genuinely uneasy feeling generated at a FotL show is the dark, slightly dangerous edge it brings to rock and roll in an age when your Vampire Weekends and your Mumford and Sons are dominating the airwaves with hyper friendly, sleep inducingly safe sounds and smooth edges.
On “I Am Scared of Everything That Isn’t Me” this pervasive sense of discomfort is given further depth by a move away from the fuzzier alt-rock/post-hardcore sound of FotL towards a more Post-Punk oriented feel. The general tone present throughout the record is a kind of eerie, unsettling paranoia akin to The Specials’s “Ghost Town”. Minor key chord progressions and jagged riffs create a sense of foreboding and at times – as in “Teeth” – tip over into hauntingly pretty territory.
[quote]Falkous’s furious intensity when performing live is almost legendary. [/quote]
The title track stands apart from the rest of the record as a more playful, bouncy track strongly reminiscent of Mclusky B-side “Random Celebrity Insult Generator” and contains the album’s best lyrics – “Cynicism is brilliant/ Yeah Cynicism is Great/ You can use it to work out who is a c**t” being a standout – and best use of the “multitrack a vocal harmony with yourself” technique that pops up several times over the course of the 12 tracks.
Despite the rough lo-fi recording quality the jangly, angular guitar work punches through the mix and is the perfect backing for Andy Falkous’s fantastically cynical and hilariously sharp lyricism.
Bradley Finney
