Mclusky
w/Oceansize, the Standard
Fri June 4, Crocodile, 9 pm, $10.
You might call Mclusky vocalist-guitarist Andy Falkous a phone-sales dropout or even an old-school art-punk punter--just don't slap that dreaded brainy tag on his band.
At least that's the word from Cardiff, Wales, where Falkous lives, breathes, and happily complains. "Some bands would be pretentious enough to print reading lists with their albums, but that's not us," the 29-year-old frontperson drawls, emitting a stream of profanity- and wit-laced opinion that won't be stemmed, despite the fact that a nearby TV is doing his head in completely. "I know of artists--and I use that term hesitatingly--who give reading lists to potential interviewers, y'know. And to be honest with you, that's so conceited that it's actually pretty cool--'If you want to interview me, you have to jump through hoop B and hoop C.' Y'know, it's so off-the-scale arrogant, it's pretty interesting."
True to Mclusky's barbed dialectic and perpetual fury, Falkous obviously gets off on his chosen role as a working-stiff contrarian, a model lyricist for the smart yet determinedly unintellectual lager-lout lifestyle. Or make that the leisure-lout strife-style. The Newcastle native's university degree in journalism and former work in the financial world mean less than zip, because life has never been better since he's quit his day job and devoted himself to screaming his guts out and abusing his guitar on Mclusky's 2002 album, Mclusky Do Dallas (Too Pure/Beggars Group), and the recently released The Difference Between Me and You Is That I'm Not on Fire (Too Pure/Beggars Group).
More varied than the critically touted, rock-heavy Do Dallas, The Difference has a spitting confidence, pummeling urgency, and heated belief in a certain mode of post-punk that's untrammeled by the sleek pop of the mid-'90s. It throbs like Falkous' skull on bad TV, falling into the footsteps of punk elders such as the Fall and Wire and second-gen kin like the Pixies and Big Black, though the band has matured enough in the last two years to know how to mix up their bitter medicine properly. Brute stompers like "That Man Will Not Hang" and "KKKitchens, What Were You Thinking?" are trailed by the more subdued drone of "Your Children Are Waiting for You to Die" and "You Should Be Ashamed, Seamus."
The Difference's tracks also end up training their rage on specific targets. "She Will Only Bring You Happiness" damns those unhappy romantics who think they must suffer for their songwriting, whereas "Without MSG I Am Nothing" takes on food additives. "How rock 'n' roll is that, man?" Falkous muses. "We'll write songs about vitamin deficiencies next."
Still, it's a big, bad world, and that, if not lousy relationships, is what gives Falkous impetus and material. "There's loads to write about. There is always something that's frustrating," he riffs. "When bands write songs like 'Saturday Night'--what's that all about? You shouldn't be allowed--any band that rhymes phone with alone [is wrong] as well."
No danger here. Six years ago, Mclusky began life on the phone as Falkous found he was far from isolated in his discontent at a Cardiff call center. After meeting and bonding with ex-drummer Mat Harding over cold-calling for housing insulation, Falkous decided to form a band, trying out the name Best before assuming the moniker Mclusky, which was inspired by the "hard but fair" headmistress of the same name in a UK children's TV series. Bassist Jon Chapple joined the pair, and out came Mclusky's debut, My Pain and Sadness Is More Sad and Painful Than Yours (Fuzzbox) in 2000.
Then after finding some infamy with Do Dallas singles like "Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues" and its video of prancing and guitar-playing kittens, the band decided to sack Harding last year. Falkous is typically, endearingly frank about the split, saying they would have been better off with Karen Carpenter, "pre- or post-death," when they went into the studio with Steve Albini for The Difference: "Y'know, bands mostly say, 'There were musical differences.' These were differences--across the board. If you can imagine a situation, there was a difference there."
Guess it was time to make a break with those call-center days. Suggest that it's a tad ironic that Falkous found his calling while selling sound insulation--and now he's meting out the noise as well as any low-flying jet--and he gives a bitter, friendly chuckle. "We give a unit and you must take a unit," he quips. "It's a yin and post-yin thing with this band."
