Sucker Punches and Fruity Pounding

Future of the Left are the phoenix that rose from the ashtray of
beloved, cocky Welsh rockers Mclusky following their 2005 breakup.
After parting ways with bassist Jon Chapple, Mclusky’s Andy “Falco”
Falkous and Jack Egglestone teamed up with Kelson Mathias (formerly of
Jarcrew), and the result has been even heavier and goofier than Mclusky
in their prime. Buzzing keyboard riffs beef up the band’s jarring rock,
while witty, wiseass, and often-nonsensical lyrics (e.g., on their 2007
debut, Curses!, they sang about pussycats and sausage served on a
stick) lighten their bass-driven battle cries.

Their recently released sophomore album, Travels with Myself and
Another, only further proves how delightfully hot-blooded and bizarre
Future of the Left can be. But if their songs don’t win you over, well,
they don’t care. They’re known for taunting hecklers, and they’ll be
more than happy to make fun of you in front of hundreds of
people—as they proved while opening for Ted Leo and Against Me!
at the Showbox last year. At that show, they so hilariously berated
some bored kids in the crowd that several people were moved to give the
band the finger for a sustained 20 minutes. The band just kept playing,
only louder. One audience member disapproved of their set so strongly
that he sucker punched Falkous in the head after their set.

Falkous spoke to The Stranger last week while on the road to
Kentucky.

Congratulations on the new record, Travels with Myself and Another.
It’s phenomenal. It must feel good to be getting ratings of 8 and 9 out
of 10 from places like Pitchfork and Drowned in Sound.

Eight out of 10 doesn’t feel good, I’ve got to be honest with you.
I’m not interested in 8 out of 10. We made a 9 or 10 or a 3 or a 0, as
far as I’m concerned. We didn’t make a record that sits in the middle
ground. If it sits in the middle ground with you, then you are a
figment of my imagination, dreamed up by my subconscious to annoy
me.

Some bands might be happy with a 6 or 7, but I guess with a 0 or 1,
at least you pissed someone off rather than boring them.

Absolutely. We have a policy as well—if we’re doing the show
and it’s not going well, we like to alienate as much of the crowd as
possible.

Speaking of, I saw you guys when you played at the Showbox here in
Seattle with Against Me! and Ted Leo…

[Laughs] That was a very enjoyable show.

Well for you guys, I think it was. But it seemed like the crowd
didn’t know what to make of you. There was a lot of heckling in both
directions.

It was great, though, because there were actually a couple hundred
people in the front that were really enjoying it. The rest of them
obviously were just giving us the finger. It was fantastic. It had such
an insanely addictive energy to it. I think even despite themselves,
the freaky little bitches quite enjoyed it.

You won them over by fighting back.

Our balls were not in question. And actually, as I was walking back
through the crowd after that set, when Ted Leo was playing, someone
sucker punched me, not very hard. Then they disappeared into the middle
of the crowd. I like it when there’s an energy in the room. What will
sometimes happen when you’re doing support is you’ll get a bunch of
particularly younger teens pushing their way to the front to make sure
they’re there for the headlining band, and they’ll lean on the railing
and look at you with a bored, exasperated expression.

To them, you’re just the band standing between them and Against
Me!

If you’re bored, that’s cool. Go to the back of the room, and we
won’t have any issues. But there’s no need to come down to the front
and make your boredom pronounced. And if you do, it’s carte fucking
blanche! If I may bastardize French in such way.

I don’t mind. I’m American, so you can do whatever you want to the
French language as far as I’m concerned.

Okay, thank you.

Are you guys sick of being the ex-Mclusky band?

In terms of the whole Mclusky thing, I mean, as you just did in your
question, people refer to Mclusky even when they’re saying people
shouldn’t refer to Mclusky. It’s not a problem. It’s a huge part of my
life—I was in that band for effectively eight or nine years. It
will always be a part of the dialogue. But if it’s the main thing,
especially at the end of the touring cycle for this record, then I
think we’ve probably failed on a number of important levels.

Well hopefully Travels with Myself and Another will make that a
thing of the past.

I’d like that to be the case. The whole point of doing the support
with Against Me!, which generally went very well, was to reach the kind
of people who would’ve never heard a band like this before. To be quite
honest with you, I was quite enamored with [Mclusky] as well, because I
made the music I wanted to hear. But I don’t really have any interest
in just reaching those people. If you think that you just want to reach
those people, then you’re really restricting your own sonic palate.

Some people just love Mclusky Do Dallas and that’s it. And that’s
cool, but they really shouldn’t have expected more records like that.
They should’ve just listened to that record again, you know? That’s the
trick. If you want to hear the record again, you can! You just press
play again.

I read an interview where you went through and dissected the meaning
of each song on My Travels, and I was surprised to see how many of your
lyrics are literal and based on real people and events. Because, no
offense, so many of the lyrics are kind of silly.

No offense taken, really. The lyrics and the style just come from
vowel sounds I start making when we’re playing a song. Then about 10
minutes before we record a song, I’ll just get out a pad of paper and
down a glass or two of Jameson and I’ll just go ahead and sing the
first thing that comes out.

I think you’re the first rock band in history to use the word
paradiddle in a song.

And three dinosaur names in one song on Curses!. That was just to
see if we could get it in while still making it very ridiculous rather
than totally ridiculous. Which I think we did. I’m still trying to get
invented words into songs, though.

If you’re just making vowel sounds and consonants, then at some
point you’re just going to make up a new language.

That’s right! There was a word I invented in Mclusky, but I’ve
actually forgotten what it was. It was so unique and real. I have
invented the word “tomcampery,” which is a contortion of tomfoolery and
camp—I think that just describes a couple of people I know far
too well. I’m trying to get that into a song as we speak.

Would you say that describes Future of the Left a little bit
too?

Tomcampery? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe there is a kind of fruity gay
side to us, which has just yet to come out. I mean, Kelson’s dancing,
especially when he plays “You Need Satan More Than He Needs You” on the
keyboard… it could definitely excite a variety of sexes. Some yet
realized, you know?

I haven’t seen that song live yet, so I couldn’t say.

There could definitely be some fruity pounding going on after that
song… [Laughs]. I wish I hadn’t said that.

Well you said it, and I have it on tape, so this is going to haunt
you forever.

[Laughs] It will. It will haunt me. Like a backward yawn.