Future of the Left - Travels with Myself and Another

  by Daniel Cressey

published: 27 / 6 / 2009

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Future of the Left shook off the weight that came from having risen from the ashes of the glorious deranged and woefully short lived Mclusky. Now they are really hitting their stride. Their second album ‘Travels With Myself and Another’ is a fantastically exciting and uncompromising album. It also manages to make the listener slightly uneasy. There’s the definite sense that if you had to choose between meeting the Left’s Jack Eggleston, Andy Falkous, and Keelson Mathias in a dark alley or, say Slayer on crack you’d choose the latter. Even with that element of disquiet ‘Travels…’ is wonderfully listenable. Single ‘The Hope That House Built’ takes a simple fuzzy guitar line and constructs a hard rock, punk-infused sea shanty that makes an enticing proposition of its hook “Come join, come join our hopeless cause.” This stomp-along is the closest to conventional that the album comes. Other songs push the boundaries further towards sonic mayhem, reaching its pinnacle with ‘You Need Satan More Than He Needs You’. An all-out sonic smash and grab on any sanity and resistance to their brilliance you may have by this point in the album, this track will likely prove their Marmite moment. The spoken vocals are barely (some would say ‘not’) coherent, the music is drill like, but it is also brilliant. After this point the band clearly feel the listener needs a break, putting out ‘That Damned Fly’, which may be the closest they ever come to a jaunty, albeit twisted, pop tune. Despite their uncompromising rock force, Future of the Left have lost none of the surreal, unexplainable humour that made Mclusky so loved. On ‘You Need Satan’ Falkous notes, “Yeah sure, Satan rules, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be practical.” And after decrying the use of plastic forks on another track he cautions that if “you let your manatee down … you drown, that’s just the way with nature”. In response to allegations that ‘Travels With Myself and Another’ is – at 33 minutes – too short, Kelson says “Write your own album, or listen to the Mars Volta.” Here those who appreciate the greatness of this album will surely disagree. At 33 minutes 'Travels With Myself and Another' is too short.

Track Listing:-

1 Arming Eritrea
2 Chin Music
3 The Hope That House Built
4 Throwing Bricks At Trains
5 I Am Civil Service
6 Land Of My Formers
7 You Need Satan More Than He Needs You
8 That Damned Fly
9 Stand By Your Manatee
10 Yin / Post-Yin
11 Drink Nike
12 Lapsed Catholics

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