future of THE left

Even though Future of the Left must tire of hearing their own back-story, quickly for the uninitiated, the band were formed out of the ashes of revered music machine Mclusky and the equally indispensable Jarcrew. Both of whom were great…and that’s all you need to know. Now, despite operating under a different moniker, the trio still work under the principal that if you drag a load of genres (some kicking, most screaming) into a darkened basement and torment them for prolonged periods of time, said genres will emerge changed. Funk for example will surface tainted and bitter. Rock will become frenzied and deranged. Pop? Pop will feel deeply ashamed with itself for even bothering Funk or Rock in the first place. So thanks to their fine musical lineage FotL are now masters in the art of musical abuse – and tonight the very idea of regularity is rendered obsolete. “Better bovine than equine!” as lead singer Andrew ‘Falco’ Falkous screams on ‘My Gymnastic Past’. Better surreal than sensible I think to myself as my ears try to catch further Kamikaze truisms. ‘Fuck The Country Side Alliance’ plods along with its lazy Pixies guitar play before a storming version of ‘Small Bones Small Bodies.’ As most of these songs only touch the three-minute mark, Kelson and Falco fill the intermissions with talk of M.A.S.H, the crowd’s “drummer loving” for their tub thumper Jack Egglestone, and inexplicably the debate as to why Bruce Springsteen is so shit*. The band hammer the sense of the surreal home with closing number ‘adeadenemyalwayssmellsgood’ – and I get the feeling that as everyone pours out onto the street, the first thing they do is tell the first person they meet that they love Future of the Left more than they love their own grandmothers. It’s in the company of a crowd like tonight that Future of the Left’s hard-edged and tetchy paeans find them at their finest. Such is the mutual adoration. * a debate that still rages