STORY BY
7 August 2012
listen: the plot against common sense
Andrew Reinholds reviews the third album from Wales’ most ferocious band, Future of the Left.
“I have seen into the future – everyone is slightly older” is just one of the razor sharp lines that spew like machine gun bullets from the mind of Andy Falkous, Future of the Left’s head honcho.
He’s lost none of his sneering social commentary on contemporary culture, a journey that began in Cardiff, Wales with hardcore group McLusky that blazed a similar trail before bitterly disbanding in 2005.
Where ‘The Plot Against Common Sense’ differs from Future of the Left’s two previous albums is not only the arrival of new fourth member Julia Ruzicka. The new album also reveals a willingness to move beyond the incredibly single bloody mindedness of ‘Curses’ and ‘Travels with Myself and Another’ to explore more melodic and poppier moments.
Yet while we have ‘Goals in Slow Motion’ and ‘Rubber Animals’ to allow us all to draw breath from the oral and aural onslaught, elsewhere the band’s meaty, frenetic and vice-tight riffs provide the perfect backdrop to Falkous’ uncompromising – yet at times brilliant and darkly funny – rants on modern life.
‘Sheena is a T-shirt Salesman’ is a take on the shameless profiteering of punk and all that it stood for. ‘Sorry Dad, I was late for the riots” calls out fair-weather middle class activists; ‘Polymers are forever’ discusses the relative merits of plastic surgery; ‘Robocop 4 – Fuck off Robocop’ is a hilarious and timely (given NZ cinemas are currently screening a movie called ‘Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter’)‘ riposte to some of the garbage being churned out by Hollywood under the guise of “entertainment”; Failed Olympic Bid’ is fairly self-explanatory.
Raw and radical. Passionate and pleading. This is as intelligent and inventive a record you’ll hear all year.
