Future Of The Left

Travels With Myself And Another

[4/5]



Considering our free-music download culture and the proliferation of the Reznor-discovered Internet Fuckwad Theory (regular dude + computer + anonymity = IFT), it’s hard to understand why bands choose to exist in the first place. The most common strain of the IFT-stricken posits that a band’s fourth album isn’t as good as said act’s debut. Or, on the convex, perhaps album four sounds too much like the first album, implying a lack of progression. Either way, some “fan” is unhappy and we’re all going to hear about it. Jesus wept.

It’s precisely this reason why Travels With Myself And Another, the sophomore disc by angular-rocking British wiseguys Future Of The Left, is so compelling. The disc lacks such popular yet losing constructs as “concessions to the fanbase” and “maturing musically,” to burn with the kind of confidence and attitude the trio routinely displayed on their 2007 debut, Curses, and follow-up live disc, Last Night I Saved Her From Vampires. Slash ’n’ burn guitarist/vocalist Andy Falkous has a gift for capturing everything from slice-of-life bar-fight stories (“Chin Music”) to absurdist fodder involving everything from corpses (“Stand By Your Manatee”) to velociraptors (“Yin/Post-Yin”) as his situationist buddies Kelson Mathias (bass/vocals) and Jack Egglestone (drums) drive the proceedings. Travels also harbors some political commentary that’s both poignant and pointed in “That Damned Fly” (“Rationalize your own revolution/It can be easily compressed/Without the young and the desperate/There won’t be anyone left”) and the jackboot cadence of “The Hope That House Built” (“Come join, come join our hopeless cause!”). Musically, the proceedings are jagged and furious in the same way that made classic Touch And Go and Dischord discs so brash, but fortified with renewed sense of purpose and garnished with synthesizer sprinkles and huge dollops of British eccentricity. FOTL have a song called “You Need Satan More Than He Needs You,” and judging by Travels With Myself And Another, the devil clearly has all the best tunes. (4AD) Jason Pettigrew

GO DOWNLOAD: “Arming Eritrea”