There are some bands that define your youth – the ones with which you started your musical journey and who you carry through your life, albeit not necessarily with the same fire – and there are some bands who, once you get past that initial voyage of discovery, just seem to slot into your taste with such a perfect fit, it’s like they’d always been there. That was mclusky for me. A band that pretty much defined my early 00s, the fire, fury, and wit of their delivery has ensured that there’s still a surge of adrenalin every time I grab one of their albums from the shelf.
It’s been a long wait for the band to return as a creative entity and, when they did, what else could do but award an extremely Spinal Tap-esque 11/10 to an album that has been glued to my stereo to such an extent that the words “unhealthy” and “obsession” are often mentioned before my long-suffering wife wrestles me to the ground and swaps the disc for something else. Anyway, mild psychosis aside, to say that I’m slightly nervous about interviewing a singer who once declared that all of my friends are c***s (he was wrong about Alton Towers though) is an understatement. Which only goes to show the gaping void between perception and the softly spoken, albeit frequently hilarious, guest who joins me for a wide ranging interview that covers everything from the band’s return to flaming clowns…. Read on and enter the magical world of mclusky.
There was a period where mclusky was dead and buried and then, you slowly came back with some charity gigs. At what point did you tip over from doing those shows to realising that you had more that you wanted to say – especially with all your other projects?
Well, in some ways it was because Future of the Left, due to the circumstances of life, couldn’t do stuff – because of having a young child. As adorable as she is, she takes up rather a lot of the diary, as is the case with children. You’re not allowed, or you really shouldn’t just leave them to their own devices, particularly when they’re very young. We did a show – we did a festival (ArcTangent) about three months after Ella was born or something. We thought ‘this is easy’ but, of course, with very, very young children, it’s easier to look after them in some ways. When they get interesting, they’re walking around and biting things, that’s when it gets more difficult.
With the mclusky thing, it happened slowly. It was genuinely an honour to be asked to be the device by which funds could be provided to people. It was popular enough to raise money. And also, in some ways, some of which are very selfish, because they make you feel good, it was great to be in a position to do things, to raise money for people. We spent a lot of our lives in a band like Future of the Left scraping by, being asked to maybe do charity shows, but being unable to do them because it directly hit our bottom line. It’s one of the things with charity shows – and this isn’t a case of getting out the smallest violin – but, a charity show, if it’s for charity and properly arranged, the only people really donating money there are the band on the stage. The fans coming to see the show are playing the same kind of money to see the same kind of show, it’s the same… it should hopefully be the same experience for them. It’s basically, if you get asked to do a London charity show, you’re effectively going ‘here’s 8 grand of our money for charity’ and, frankly, we’re not in the earning bracket where we could be giving that much money to charity, you know.
So, you know, in the case of mclusky, it certainly wasn’t money we were budgeted for or counting on and it felt really lovely to be able to help out. And I think it’s something that isn’t talked about or thought about enough. Being generous and kind is a very selfish act. It makes you feel great [laughs]. There came a time when we’d done a show for Cancer Research in maybe 2016 or 17 in The Garage and that was fun. But then Jack did say to me ‘can we do a fundraiser for ourselves, please? We’re all poor!’ It was like ‘ah yeah! Maybe we could do that.’ But it wasn’t really taken seriously. I was too much in the generosity frame of mind – actually I’m a bit of as modern saint so…
But then we started doing it and it turned out that people liked it and, more significantly, people liked it – we liked it. It was a lot of fun. At the start it was very much Future of the Left playing mclusky songs. That was kind of the spirit of it. It was like stepping into a costume. I know when David Yow talks about shows, he calls them ‘re-enactments’ which is funny, but it’s just a way of being self-deprecating when you’re the greatest frontman in the history of rock music. For us, maybe it had that aspect when it started but, but the time… by 2019, when mclusky was very much a different entity in terms of the personnel but also in terms of the mindset, it had become a completely different thing, and it began to be a serious thing. And, even at that stage, we weren’t talking about writing new material or anything. Sorry, that’s probably the longest answer in the history of rock music [laughs].
Perception is an interesting thing – I followed you in the early 00s and, from the outside, it felt like mclusky were really doing well, both artistically and financially, and I remember you played a lot of festivals; but obviously, the reality was very different. It’s a strange juxtaposition and it must be very odd for you as an artist to be out on tour a lot and see the name everywhere and yet still be struggling behind the scenes to make it work on a financial level.
Yeah, I think, certainly speaking specifically about back then, because of the nostalgia effect, there’s a little bit more money in it now. Not a lot of money, frankly, but a little bit. But, back then, I mean and… again, that would be the perception. You’d go to the pub and someone would go ‘oh, alright mate, you get me a drink!’ And you’d want to go ‘I’m living on four grand a year – that’s what I’m living on’. There was a stage during early Future of the Left where I managed to negotiate – because we were doing enough stuff that we couldn’t do jobs – temp jobs or otherwise – so, I negotiated a £1,000 each a month. You know. I negotiated us poverty wages and that was seen as being a bit previous, you know. And it was seen as ‘wow, you’ve really arrived’. If you’re living on twelve grand a year before tax in 2010, you were not putting the downpayment on a yacht! You were putting the downpayment on a replica yacht, you know.
So, it was really, really tough. It definitely, as much as I like to, at times, make hilarious jokes about former band mates and stuff, I do also appreciate them for what they brought to the band – sometimes humour is a good defence mechanism – but, I would have to say that that poverty had a real effect on people. It’s tiring, as well. It’s tiring. Every single choice we made in that band was for saving money. Whereas sometimes, as an adult, it’s nice to go ‘do you know what, we’re not going to do the cheapest thing today!” [Laughs].
To give you… OK, the day I made the most money in the first run of mclusky was, we were flying to Australia for the first time so, by this stage Jack was in the band. And then we discovered that, not only were we flying to Australia – to Brisbane – we were flying the wrong way around the world, because it was cheaper. So, we were flying via Los Angeles. When we got to Heathrow, we found out that our plane was full and they bumped us an extra two hours to the next flight. Actually, that didn’t add anything to our journey, but the people at the check in desk didn’t know that and they gave us – and were talking about this the other day, Jack and I, and we couldn’t remember exactly – it was either £125 or £150 that they gave us. My recollection is that it was vouchers, but he says it was cash – I can’t remember that particular detail because it was 23-years ago. But the thing is, I’ve told the story so much to people that it’s become vouchers! So, I’ve ended up manifesting that. Memory is a strange and inexact science. Anyway, we were paid this amount of money and that was the day that I made the most money while I was in mclusky.
So, you know, that was the reality of that band. It was never a money-making scheme. I mean, hilarious jokes aside, it really wasn’t. But, as I’m sure anybody reading this who doesn’t have a trust fund knows, you need money to survive in society. So, yeah, that was a bit of a thing. I think, there comes a time in your life where things happen and some people are somewhat interested in your opinions or stories and you always think ‘now, this’ll be a good story’ – but there comes a time when you’re probably always thinking that, and then you need therapy [laughs].
It’s been a long time since the third album and, obviously you’ve been through a lot and evolved as a musician, and there are different people in the band as well, but it feels as if you’re consciously trying new elements and sounds – the first two songs in particular feel very different to anything we’ve heard from mclusky before, especially in the vocals. It sounds like you’re exploring your range more where, hitherto, it felt like you were using distortion as a bit of a shield…
Although, there is that thing where, when you’re a kid, distortion is synonymous with excitement and aggression. But there is also a point, maybe on a subconscious level, where distortion masks – it masks personalities and it masks flaws, and sometimes it’s the flaws which are the interesting things. It’s one of the key things. I did some work with bands years ago. I didn’t end up getting paid for it because I didn’t put the invoice in, because it was embarrassing, frankly. But there’s that key thing – say if a bunch of kids are playing Teen Spirit, the guy stamps on the distortion pedal for the chorus and everything gets quieter. You know, because that’s what distortion pedals do. They compress the signal. I kind of have come around more to that principal. There’s actually not… there’s still distortion on the bass but actually not as much as there used to be. But I don’t have a particularly distorted guitar. A lot of it is quite choppy and it’s brittle – that might be a word for it.
Unpopular Parts of a Pig and Cops and Coppers are unusual songs because I’m using guitar chords. I have quite wee hands, and I’ve always struggled with chords and things, and I find them quite boring – quite meat ‘n’ potatoes sounding a lot of the time: chord, chord, chord – you know? Especially if the bass is doing the root notes as well, it’s like you don’t need this chord – you’ve already implied the sound. Vocally, I probably am trying some quite different things, but nobody sat down and came up with a plan to do that. It just happened. Ultimately, and I think this is probably true of most bands and artists and whatever and processes – what works, works. They worked and when a song works and it fits, it doesn’t need any analysis. If you spend a lot of your time analysing what’s happening, the chances are it’s because you’ve created a new form of music (hopefully, that form of music, though, that means that ska doesn’t exist anymore). Listen, and this is a good format here, some of my best friends like ska music [laughs]. But yeah, it exists.
You don’t think about it or talk about it – you just instinctively write with your experience and write with those things, but you don’t come into the room and go ‘noted indie rock musician Andy Falkous, 49, really wants to…’ You know, you don’t bring your legacy explicitly to it – you react in a very instinctual… instinctual? Instinctive way. And you just go for it. Essentially, the album is 100 attempts at just going for it and the best 13 are on the record. That’s what it is.
And by virtue of the stuff that excites you, there’s going to be some variety in vocal performances. Cops and Coppers, I’ve got to say, it’s a lot of fun to sing. It’s not a lot of fun to sing and play at the same time. That takes quite the effort and I’m not into effort on the stage. But seriously, a lot of the mclusky stuff is very, very simple. The newer stuff is not as simple, but the whole idea is that it’s so simple, yet it works, that you can just concentrate on the performance. Future of the Left, at times, it’s not that it’s complex but, in a timing sense, you’ve got to be more aware of what’s going on around you. I say this, but what I’ve been saying in interviews on this record (and this has been just to wind Jack up) – Jack is a drummer and a proper musician, so he likes to rehearse. Whereas, playing old songs – I fucking know the song! And he always wants to practice and I’m like, ‘I don’t do practice – you guys don’t know the songs, go home and study!’ But I’ve been saying in all these interviews, ‘oh yeah, I don’t like to rehearse because rock music doesn’t need to be rehearsed – especially not over-rehearsed – I like the excitement!’ And, really, what we’re speaking about there is lead singer privilege because I can be all over the place, but they can’t, because they’re the rhythm section. So, the way I see it, is that’s my privilege; and their privilege is that I do all the fucking admin!
When it comes to writing – do you jam to find the next piece, or are you going in with preconceived elements that kickstart the process?
Damian likes to write his stuff at home. But that’s two songs on the album. Those songs basically came in, if not fully formed, then 80% formed. For me, it’s all in the room. In my life, I’ve maybe… there’s the mclusky song Who You Know, I wrote that at home on an acoustic guitar. I mean, that’s not my bag, the acoustic guitar. Whenever I see an acoustic guitar, I genuinely feel as if we’re both eying each other across a bar and the saloon doors have just swung shut and it’s either me or it. It’s often used for so much evil. So, I wrote Who You Know like that, and there’s a couple of Future of the Left songs – Things to Say There and Friendly Policeman. I wrote that one when I was sick and I was walking up the stairs in our house in Cardiff and I just wrote that song while I was walking up the stairs. But, apart from that, it’s all in the room. There’s something about the velocity and the volume of the music. That part where the velocity and the volume meet, the inspiration between the three different people is what makes it sound so special live. We could write songs, and they would sound really good on a record at home. But they wouldn’t translate as well to the live setting. And all of the songs are written with the object of playing them live. It’s not a guiding principle. We’ll make an exception for a song which sounds fantastic in a particular way – so, it’s not a hard and fast rule, but it’s a good starting point – stuff you can play. If there’s an idea, you should be able to imagine yourself in the middle of the band, just stood there and you’re genuinely in the room, apart from, like, ‘where’s this fucking string section come from? Who are these guys?’ You know? [Laughs]
It should feel, yeah, it should feel like being in the room.
So, I guess it’s much the same in the studio – recorded live with very few overdubs?
Yeah, um, overdubs at the behest / suggestion (I just really wanted to say behest) of Ant in this case. When we were working with Steve Albini back in the day, he was an overdub atheist. I remember doing She Will Only Bring You Happiness and I did the first vocal and he went ‘that’s a wrap man, sounds great’.
And I told him there was a harmony vocal and he went ‘it doesn’t need it!’
And I was like ‘well, that’s what it’s got’.
And he replied, ‘well, it’s your record!’
He’s right. But occasionally Ant will go – the same with this record – ‘you’ve done like that, maybe try it with a different guitar to see if the other guitar works better’. There are three or four songs where there’s probably an extra guitar there. My preference of guitar – the guitar I love to play – is a Telecaster. But the Les Paul has a thicker, chord-y sound. The reason I’m not as keen on a Les Paul is, if used in its traditional way, it can be a bit dull. It can dominate by the same token, whereas a Telecaster can just ride over the top and just scratch away. I just love a Telecaster. It’s the best thing in the world. I actually bought a guitar for the first time in I don’t know however long from Fender just before Christmas and it’s the nicest thing I’ve ever owned. When I bought it, I did consider – because I think Julia was ill and she was sleeping in the other room – I did consider taking the guitar to bed with me and humping it [laughs].
It’s a much flintier sound for sure. Strats and Telecasters – I love both and Les Paul’s too but, you’re right, they have that very chunky sound. If you’re doing Alice in Chains-y kind of stuff, it works really well, but punkier / artier stuff – sonic youth or something – they’re scratching away and there’s a much cleaner sound and a lot of overtones in the top.
Yeah, you’re hear more of the notes. It’s just a livelier thing. I think with a Tele – I have a Telecaster Deluxe – you have a range of sounds as well. You can begin to play some chords, you can find a way to do that With a Les Paul… well, that’s not true – there are some nice high melodies with a Les Paul, but there’s a body to it which you can’t escape. You can’t suddenly make a Les Paul all scratchy unless your lead’s broken [laughs] ‘Ah, sounds like a Tele… ah, one of the valves has gone in the amp’.
But yeah, it’s essentially live. I did have a severe reoccurrence of the ear issues I had when I was doing the second session – that was when we did the songs People Person, Competent Horse Thief and Cops and Coppers. So, I didn’t enjoy that session as much because I was incredibly worried about my own health. But I still think I pulled it out. I still pulled it out. By the last session, which was in most ways most successful, where we did the songs Hate the Polis… basically the end of the album – the last five songs I felt a lot more comfortable. But I don’t think that comes across. The vocal in Cops and Coppers doesn’t sound like I’m a man going through any deep melancholy. It’s a lot of fun to sing and, for example, I couldn’t have written that song at home because that whole vocal delivery needs to be sung at top volume. If I try to approximate that high note at the end of every phrase, you need to get your whole body behind it to sing it. I love that song. In my ideal world, that’s a hit single! As archaic as those words are when shoved together.
It’s interesting, because it would be so easy to go to falsetto, but if you’re doing it full body, you really have to assault those high notes!
Yeah, you’ve got to go for it! Yeah, but it is a lot of fun to sing. If all the songs were like that, it would be a bit much. It’s almost like a flow state of performance and, as much as I say I like shows to be easy, I just want to concentrate on performing, telling bad jokes between songs, and sweating! That’s all I want to do; it’s a physical performance. Actually, it’s my exercise for the day, it’s my steps. I don’t want to have to be thinking ‘oh, what’s coming up now?’ Or ‘how do I do this?’
Having said that, with so many new songs and obviously we’re not doing all of them. I think we’re probably playing nine or ten songs live, but not all in one set, obviously. That’s a bit rude, isn’t it? ‘Welcome to the show, here’s loads of new songs!’ We’ll probably do six or seven new ones and about nine or ten old ones – that’s a nice balance, I think.
But there are, by virtue of having that many new songs, I am going to have little bits of paper, like on the monitors, giving me little cues. Cause, you know, I just need the first word usually and then [adopts old man voice] ‘oh yes, I remember this one!’ Somebody sees the clip of a really impressive goal from the 90s and you’re like [the old man voice returns] ‘oh yes, I remember the score now, it was 3-1!’ [Laughs]
Unless you make the dreaded mistake of being so proud of yourself for getting the first line out that all the other words suddenly up and vanish!
Yeah! Well, sometimes live, say, if I sing the second verse first, because I’ve forgotten where I was, then – by the time you get to the next verse, you’re not sure if you should do the second verse again, or do the first verse for the second verse. Because, in a sense, if I do the second verse again, I’ve only made one mistake. This is vocalising to an average of 320 people at the top level! [Laughs]
The fact that you went through the tinnitus and, I think, hyperacusis and managed to perform through that – I’m really surprised that you were able to go into the studio and get that intensity of performance.
Yeah, I mean, I just have to be… it hasn’t been a linear recovery. There was no recovery at all for probably six or seven months and, I mean, most of my tinnitus… well, the working theory with tinnitus in most cases is hearing loss and it’s your brain replacing those frequencies and saying, ‘hey mate, have this’. And you’re like, ‘no, no, I don’t want that!’
‘No, but you must – you must have it!’
Before that, I had very slight tinnitus in my left ear, the kind that you only become aware of really late at night when it’s really quiet. And it wasn’t anything that particularly bothered me since, in the original run of mclusky, I didn’t take very much care of my ears. But, after that, I had some hearing tests and wore moulded plugs and became super-careful. I still was aware that it was loud, but I would move away from stuff if it was too loud for me. And, as a band, even though I music suits being delivered at volume, it’s one of the dynamics of it, if we do shows and people tut and go ‘oh, that was loud’ – or we had a soundman who was like ‘yeah man, I blew their ears off tonight!’ That’s not the point. It should be loud. You should feel the kick in the chest but, apart from that, you should be able to choose your experience in the room. If you want to be right at the front, then go right to the front. Although, frankly, if you go right at the front, it’s one of the quietest places because the PA speakers are effectively behind you, or certainly their direction is more to the people maybe about a third of the way back in the crowd – that’s kind of the loudest place. So, that was never the point. But my hyperacusis, I couldn’t even be in a room with a running tap for three or four months, I didn’t listen to any music at all, no podcasts – I just wondered around Bristol, usually late at night, wearing ear defenders. I tried out lots of different ear defenders because, originally, the problem happened about three weeks before we were supposed to go on tour to the States. So, those three weeks became a mad rush to solve a problem. That was insane. I went… there’s a very nice fellow called Courtney who worked in the barbers where I was getting my hair cut the day before going to the States – I went in there and I basically had the first panic attack that I’ve ever had in my life, and I guess it was because of the pressure. It would have destroyed me if I’d gone to the States at that point. It would have absolutely destroyed me. I was not ready physically or in terms of my – God, I hate it when people say mental health, because everyone has… I was psychologically just not in a good place. And it was because I hadn’t made the right decision and the second I called the tour off, the panic subsided because I’d made the correct decision.
I experimented with a few different things. I used a kind of in ear monitor set up with active mics on – it didn’t really work for me so well. I’ve had to kind of… I wear, like, moulded IEMs, which I just use as earplugs in rehearsal now. To be honest, they keep out so much noise that ear defenders on top probably only dull the sound a tiny, tiny bit. So, I’m not sure. On bigger stages, I’m not sure I need to wear the ear defenders and I’m quite a… on stage it turns out I’m not a physically sensitive person. I’m not a person who’s particularly stoked with the way that I look in my life. I’m quite self-conscious. But, on stage, it turns out that’s not the case and, when I put on ear defenders, I looked at myself in the mirror and I was like ‘you look like a fanny, mate!’ But then I got on stage, and I was… I just didn’t care. It just, you know, coming to the realisation that no one is there to look at my pretty ears. And just trying to just use it to make more jokes. And the good thing is that you can’t hear hecklers. Asa a result, you can choose exactly what you want to riff of back!
Yeah, it was a horrible, horrible experience and it’s ongoing to a degree. Occasionally after some shows – so, for example, I have tinnitus that is largely because of hearing loss because of the years and years of playing that kind of music. And also have problems with my neck that accentuates it. So, I have tinnitus in my left ear and if I push down on my left ear, the tinnitus spikes by about 500%. It’s really crazy but, ultimately, I’ve found a way through it. Or at least I have found a way through it at this stage. I don’t want to get too smug, yet.
[A brief digression as we discuss a similar issue I experienced]
It’s cymbals which do it for you. Yeah, I mean the international campaign against cymbals is something I’ve been trying… when I do my solo records, I always try to get Jack – because he usually plays on them – I try to get him to record the cymbals separately. And that’s my way of saying that I don’t want cymbals on this. Because there are… cymbals are, on a basic level, a very cheap way of saying ‘here’s the chorus’. It’s louder now, it must be the chorus! It’s Smells Like Teen Spirit again – there’s the chorus! I mean, there are a few Future of the Left songs that are very cymbal heavy in the choruses. We did some songs towards the back end of last year and there was part of me thinking ‘oh good, that’ll be a break in the volume from doing mclusky’ because I hadn’t played those songs for a while. Turns out I was so wrong. Future of the Left, if anything, is louder than mclusky. It’s really loud. Some of those songs are wow! The loudest mclusky song is probably Chasers – towards the back end of that song, to quote Chris Morris, it’s like a pig in a war! Future of the Left, there’s a few songs, but the end of a song called How to Spot a Record Company – that is so loud. It is so loud. When you’re in your own rehearsal, playing your own song, and looking at your own bandmates and thinking ‘could we keep it down a bit?’ You know? But, I guess, it shows the life we’ve signed up for.
But yeah, I’ve subsequently had conversations with people about it – people who have been suffering – and the answer, I think, is to give yourself time. You might have to adjust your relationship to the way you perform music. I mean, my IEMs pretty much just have my vocals and a little bit of kick drum. And, in general, it’s been great. It’s meant that I can hear things better in some senses. There have been two or three venues that we played where the onstage sound was so, I don’t want to say bad, but so particular that, maybe I’m stood on the sub bass, you know, on the stage, where I haven’t been able to pitch certain notes. Particularly in a song like Alan Is a Cowboy Killer. A lot of singing you can do from muscle memory to a degree, but a song like that, I need that note to sing off. And I can’t nearly have the note. Yeah, there was that, and a song called Gareth Brown Says – I was completely unable to sing those songs, and I just had to say, ‘I can’t sing these songs guys, because of my bizarre ear disability, those songs aren’t going to be happening tonight.’ But also, there were a bunch of hilarious jokes, so nobody cared! It’s so freeing to be such a raconteur. Please note, not a member of the raconteurs – that’s a different thing.
I find you get some venues where there’s a weird acoustic thing where it knocks your perception of the note out of whack and, while your muscle memory tells you you’re doing it right, your ears just don’t agree.
Feeling off is enough. Feeling off is enough because the spirit needs to be there. It needs to be delivered at velocity – at volume and, if it’s not there, everyone else can tell you it was great and you can be like ‘I didn’t enjoy it, so fuck you!’ [Laughs]
That’s… you don’t go all the way around the world just to make other people happy. You do it to make yourself happy and really enjoy the moment and to feel as if you’re in the band. The idea is to be, surely for any musician, is to feel as if you’re in the band. Not to be like [carries on imaginary conversation]:
‘Yeah, it was alright.’
‘Was it alright?’
‘Yeah, you guys were great, it was the eighth best show I saw this year!’
Who could even be slightly interested in that? But yeah, now I know to basically scout out events in advance; talk to people in different cities and find out how they sound both for the crowd and the band on stage as well.
But yeah, there are particular frequencies that can get lost, or undulate and knock you off your feet totally and, as a performer, I think I’m good at grinning and bearing through certain things… I can be going through a personal tragedy and still perform well, because you’ve got to be a professional when people have paid £22 – 26 for a show. That’s a lot of money and you appreciate that, and people deserve a show. But also, the idea is that we get to be happy on stage as well. Revolutionary, I know. Any catharsis is purely in the eyes of marketing team.
Speaking of marketing and having fun, it did look like you had a hell of a lot of fun doing the videos for this album – from standing in an office as people go into some Event-Horizon-scale madness (People Person) and Chekhov’s Guns with the flaming clown… how involved were you with the concepts and was it as much fun as it looked ?
Not at all in terms of developing the concept. Remy, who we were lucky enough to work with, is… well, obviously, somebody needs to go round and have a word, don’t they? I won’t tell you what the budget is for those, but it’s really not very much money. I dare say he’s got himself into a lot of debt to do those clips. I will say, wait until you see the last one. It is absolutely…
It involves a… he hired a drone crew and some banger racers, and we filmed in a field, and it was absolutely potty. It’s the first time that we’ve been able to get Jack and Damian there as well. Damian was meant to be there for the People Person video but, without putting too fine a point on it he was very ill and almost died. Yeah, he basically had appendicitis that was not treated quickly enough, and it went as far as infections. It wasn’t very nice for all of us, but for particularly for him. That was an awful experience so, as a result he wasn’t able to film People Person because, let’s face it, he’s as physically imposing as any professional wrestler. Jack wasn’t able to do it because he’s always at a christening. At any particular time, Jack is at a christening. Maybe on the qt, he’s a very religious person who believes in anointing the head of babies, I don’t know.
So, we performed in a field. This guy Adam made these gigantic replica amplifiers, the banger racers went around us, and, at the end, they smashed over the amps. But, to end the story, at the end – the drone crew were flying the drone around the area – to do establishing shots – and the drone lost signal and crashed into a river. And Damian reckons – if you’ve seen the Final Destination films, the conceit is somebody has escaped death and death is coming for them another way – the last shot of the video had me sat on top of a banger racer car as it went, I don’t know, 10 miles an hour around as the drone flew around me. Damian’s working theory is, since the band is cursed (and believe me, it is cursed), the fact that I didn’t fall off the car and at least break my arm, meant that something had to be taken away that day. You know? But it turned out that death or karma got it wrong and targeted the drone crew. And frankly their insurance premiums. But it was such a shame because it was such a lovely, bananas day.
I mean, for a band like us who are used to scrapping away and doing it, but with a very small circle – there’s no glamour involved (and neither deliberately, or being ostentatiously the other way) so, when you get to a location, and there are several people who have been clearly paid a lot of money to be there and to make it better is just a totally mind-blowing situation. It’s like ‘what? What are all these people doing? Are they here for us? That’s a bit weird, isn’t it?’
So, it was a totally entertaining day and that was a nice day. Video shoots – there’s a lot of standing around waiting for stuff to happen. It’s for Autofocus on the Prime Directive; it’s for that song. It was a very fun day,
But yeah, Remy came up with the ideas. Sent through a mood board or whatever and I went ‘yeah, sure’.
Initially, I said I’d rather not be in them because I nobody needs to see my face at all. But he gradually blurred the boundaries of what that meant, you know. But in a way that, frankly, I think he has a lot of experience in. He’s used to talking people into doing things. I don’t mean he’s a dangerous sexual predator – just in this particular sense! [Laughs]
I will say that I’m genuinely surprised, music aside, that the videos haven’t got more views than they have – especially Chekhov’s Guns. He did a slightly more coloured version for Instagram, I think, because the original video as viewed on a big screen looks incredible but, maybe on a phone it might have looked a bit dark until the fire. It worked very well in the contrast when the fire came in, but I just think that video is a work of art.
It is awesome, but it’s getting harder to cut through the noise than it was – there are a lot more bands vying for attention and producing things that are imaginative and are innovative. It’s disappointing, because there’s some great music that just doesn’t get the traction it once would have.
Or it gets a semi-boost and then the next day, there’s something else. It’s one of… what is definitely true is that ticket sales for everybody across the board are quite slow at the minute. I say for everybody – not for the megastars or whatever. But part of that is… say if I compare it to 2019 (because I’m basically our agent for the UK), with about three-months’ notice I could get the Brudenell and the Gorilla in Manchester – I could get those and book a weekend. Now. for example, if you wanted to book a decent show in Bristol, you’d have to look at March next year or February next year. So, it’s not just that people don’t have as much money as they’d like, the case is that they might have that money but the perception that they don’t – which is just as important. You can have money but if you don’t feel you have money, you’re not going to spend it. But there are so many people playing – so many bands playing and so much to choose from. It takes a genuine effort to find out what may appeal to you. Like you said – to cut through that noise. Not any of that good sexy noise. Just volume. I remember playing with an American band years ago and they were loud. They sounded like Oasis, but it was loud. Imagine Oasis but really loud. I said to the bass player, who was in a very, very successful band as well. He went ‘how was that?’ I said, ‘it was good man, but it was loud!’ And he went ‘that’s how we roll’ and I said ‘no, it was too loud!’ For anybody in the room it was deafening. That kind of noise. Not that all Americans are loud – only 93%
In terms of the lyrics – there are so many great observations scattered across the albums. Do you work to hone them at all or are they very much stream of consciousness?
Stream of consciousness a thousand times – pick out the best ones or the ones that have a flow or lead on, perhaps, to something else. But I think the fact that there’s lots of one-liners shows you what my attention span is. [Laughs]
And, again, a lot of the time – wherever making music or writing- writing, which I do a bit of, if you’re serious about it, you’re doing the work even when you’re not doing the work. You’re always working, you’re always processing stuff. Little ideas when you’re walking to the shops or in the gym, you’re thinking about these things, your brain is always processing this stuff. I’m hearing something, whether it’s in a podcast or on TV or it’s something my daughter says – I’m having that. Damian said, ‘you’ve got to focus on the prime directive’ and I was like ‘or ‘autofocus on the prime directive’. You’ve got to always be ready to pounce – like Bob Mortimer’s Hand Lion in Would I Lie to You – you’ve got to be ready to pounce on any given moment on a good idea and to see it through.
One thing I’ve found, doing this record, is that some songs make internal sense to me, but I wouldn’t be entirely sure what they actually meant. However, two French people have been very kind to me during this album cycle to explain to me what the songs mean. And I’ve got to be honest, they’re completely correct. So, it’s nice to be psychoanalysed by a music journalist living in Lyon. I really enjoyed that. There is a function to this – an artistic function way just beyond marketing.
You kind of lose control, really, don’t you – once it’s out there in the world (unless you package your album with an essay), you’re going to get that kind of analysis.
Yeah, you know, sometimes people get it very, very wrong indeed. And sometimes they get it very, very wrong indeed while being positive. Negative criticism, I don’t agree with the tone of the criticism, but it gets the subject, the topic, and the essential analysis on the nose. But it has a different value system, so it doesn’t interpret it in the same kind of way. Yeah, for me as well, explaining the songs is all very well and I’ll occasionally nod or add a sentence or two, but the whole idea is that the songs explain themselves and sometimes you can tell as much about somebody’s p[perspective on something by the mood and the nature of their delivery and maybe how articulate the delivery is as opposed to the words spelling out a story that has a beginning a middle and an end. You don’t need to say ‘war is bad’ to say war is bad. And some of the best songs are about things without being about them. You want to be topic adjacent, I think. Because, you know, although most very successful music is incredibly on the nose to the point of being a nose, there’s not a lot more to it and I understand that. I understand why that’s the case, you want to cut through and say something straight away. You don’t want someone to take it away. I mean Cops and Coppers, I think you could come away from that song thinking this guy isn’t a huge fan of the police, but he has some ambivalence about the way we talk about them. But, sitting down and actually explaining it that way to someone is just horrendous. It needs to be explained at volume, and it needs to be funny as well. And it needs to have some rock guitars! I mean, we can have these conversations all we like but what we’re basically addicted to is that huma. And that scratch, and that distortion. What it just does to you from the groin all the way up to the brain, hopefully. It’s just so exciting. Excitement, that’s what it’s meant to engender more than anything. And then, you know, we’re not going to share a reading list with the album. That would be horrendous.
When it was announced that you’d gone with Ipecac – Mike Patton’s label and mclusky – it seemed like the perfect match because everything they put out from Melvins to Jesus Lizard, it’s all left-of-centre and really interesting. What are the benefits for you?
Yeah, it’s our first label for a long time. I’m not a label guy. I know of labels, of course. I’m not a completist. I don’t really…, I like other bands, but I don’t really follow them. Someone will mention a band that I like, and it’ll turn out that there are huge gaps in the discography that I had no idea about. When it comes to music, I’m very self-obsessed. But they’re definitely a great fit in terms of working with them on a day-to-day basis. I don’t want to be too gushing because it’s rude, but it’s been a wonderful experience so far. Who knows, maybe it’ll just be for one record. The band may only do this record. The plan is to do more records, but you never know what’s going to happen in this world. But yeah, I suppose, a lot of people on Instagram said it was the perfect fit and who am I to argue with people on Instagram. But so far, it’s been a wonderful experience and also, happily or sadly, depending on your perspective, makes a large constituency of people take you more seriously. One thing we found with Future of the Left when we stopped working with labels was that we sold more records because, frankly, we were doing a better job. We sold far more records, we started playing bigger shows, but we stopped getting festivals. Because there’s a certain cachet sometimes with festivals with a band being on a label. In the same way there is, to a degree, a prejudice against bands being self-managed, the implication being that they can’t get a manager. A manager isn’t something you get; it’s something that you perhaps need when you reach a certain size of band. We are a band who are right at the edge of needing a manager but, if we got a manager, we literally wouldn’t make any money, so we don’t have a manager and the other guys – they have to deal with me, the suckers!
I’m not sure it’s the best business policy going forwards, but it’s certainly a lot of fun dealing with emails about support requests, I’ll tell you!
That cachet the comes with a label, even those that aren’t very good, seems to swing the pendulum towards festivals and media attention.
Unless your whole thing, unless you try to sell it as ‘we are DIY’ and, frankly, there’s a lot of discussion to be had around how heavily people wear certain aspects of themselves; if the first thing you tell me about your band is that you’re DIY, then I can honestly say that, in my experience, you’re going to be in a terrible band because if that’s the first thing – I’m sorry a) I assumed you were DIY anyway – who isn’t these days. Huge bands, yeah? Doing it yourself…it’s like with anything; people are certain things. But some people will wear aspects of that very heavily. For example, if a person is a feminist, you can tell by the way they act – their actions, as opposed to pronouncements they make about themselves. That’s ultimately the way society decides these things. It’s always interesting to me – a band’s topline. What do you tell people about yourself straight off the bat. All you should do is have a link to your music, that’s it, and tell them where you are. If you’re defined by your story rather than your music then, congratulations, you can be very successful… but you’re also going to be shit!
