There can be no news more simultaneously thrilling and terrifying to a music fan than hearing that that band – you know, the one that tipped you over the edge from a normal member of society who simply enjoys music into some irrational obsessive, and who broke your heart when they split up – are reforming. The chance to relive those formative musical years is undeniably beguiling, but can it possibly be the same? What if they’ve changed? What if you’ve changed? Of course, you both have (and if that’s not the case, that’s probably even more of a cause for concern). What if they’re just going through the motions for the nostalgia circuit paycheck, or they attempt a funk-jazz reimagining of your favourite song? What if reforming has rekindled the spark that made them so vital first time around and it ignites you in the same way it did back then? What if they start writing new music and it’s awful/amazing/boring/mind-expanding/sounds like a pub tribute band/reasserts your belief in their musical genius?
mclusky are in the running for being that band for me, engaged in a decades-long three-way cage fight to the death with Urusei Yatsura and Mansun within my medial temporal lobe for that particular honour (indeed the ‘joy’ in Joyzine came from me flicking through my cd collection for website naming inspiration and landing on the opening track of their debut album my pain and sadness is more sad and painful than yours), so when the word spread in 2014 that they were playing a one-off show to support under-threat Welsh independent music venue Le Pub, ten years after they had parted ways, and that the show had sold out before the news had reached me, my brain went into meltdown.
A little over a decade later I ask frontman Andrew Falkous if going into that show he had any inkling that it would be the start of a new era of mclusky.
“No, it was very much Future of The Left playing mclusky songs with our friend Damien,” he responds. “That was the deliberate vibe of it as opposed to mclusky in any real sense of the word. It was cosplaying it back then, it was playing a bunch of fun songs to raise money for some good people. Whereas the mclusky which exists now is mclusky in the real sense of the word.”
With our nerves calmed by a string of excellent live shows and the amuse bouche of 2023’s unpopular parts of a pig EP, a new mclusky album the world is still here and so are we is due for imminent release via Ipecac Records (and I can calm the nerves of any jittery mclusky fans by saying it’s every bit as good as we hoped it would be). How did we get here?
“A series of happy accidents and unhappy accidents at times. Having kids which meant doing Future of The Left became more difficult. People asking you to do shows, thinking about it and then doing those shows and then being asked to do more shows.”
While never a chart straddling colossus in their original incarnation, mclusky seem to be one of those bands that if you’re into them, you’re really into them, and there are plenty of fans from back then who are very excited about this release. Does that bring a different kind of pressure?
“I mean it would be silly to deny that that’s there, but it’s such a small part of the picture of pressure. Honestly I feel in my life a financial pressure because I have to live in a notional first world economy. So I need to make so much money in order to live. I feel pressure in terms of relationships, in terms of getting those right. But there’s no pressure about making art anymore, there hasn’t been for a long time. There can’t be when you only have 6 hours a month to rehearse. That’s got to be the fun part of it.”
Anyone hoping for a reheated mclusky do dallas will be disappointed (or perhaps thrilled at something different but still great), and that was never going to be the intention.
“With all due respect, the fan who doesn’t like your new album, they can always go and find other music to listen to or they can re-listen to the old music – just press play on that again… Some people won’t like it and that’s unfortunate for them, you know. I mean that’s not to say it’s the answer to all of their musical prayers, but they’ve changed or haven’t changed in particular ways, and hopefully they can still find a love for music elsewhere.”
For any new album to work, particularly with a gap this long since the last record, there needs to be something new. Not a complete vault face necessarily, but an evolution, building on what went before and trying different paths, adding the new experiences and influences that you’ve gained along the way, and the world is still here… gets that balance spot on.
“I know on a creative level that there are some things I do which can be pretty good, but I can do things which just sound like… I’ll write a part for a song and Julia will go, ‘Yeah. It sounds like you,’ and what that means is ‘Try harder’. It’s easy to do your thing when you’ve established your thing. You’ve got to break through what that is just a little bit, you know, just to keep yourself interested.”
One new element is bassist Damien Sayell (also of the excellent Saint Pierre Snake Invasion), a long-term fan of the band before joining their ranks for the early reunion gigs.
“I think Damien approaching it from the aspect of being a fan… It’s refreshing in some ways and it makes him a good judge in some ways and it makes him a bit of a prick in other ways, you know, because fan covers a wide range of people, from people who respectfully enjoy your music to pretty hedonistic guys who want you to get fucked up with them, to absolute fucking idiots.”
“It alters the dynamic only as much as a different person is there. Anybody in a room is bringing their own personality and their history and their views… Everybody has their little things – Damien loves a slide. I like a preposterous time signature. And Jack doesn’t like songs which are fast because they’re tiring. But yeah, he’s devoted to the band in a way that myself and Jack are devoted as well. That’s a central part of the band’s existence. The reason the band stopped existing in the first place is because everybody in the band wasn’t devoted to its existence… Our commitment is furious and total.”
On the world is still here and at the live shows that commitment has been clearly on display. A band enjoying making music and being back on stage.
“I mean, who knows exactly what the fuck I’m trying to communicate, but it’s always been the most important thing in my life… Maybe if the band had been more successful, maybe if I’d had to play ‘Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues’ 800 times, maybe there would be a degree of “for fuck’s sake not again,” but there’s not. And the thing with a song like that is you can’t sing it half arsed. It’s impossible. It can’t happen. To half arse it, it would just stop happening.”
“We did a show once in Stockholm and four people paid to see us. And we’d travelled from Zagreb – I think we worked it out as 620 kilometres per person who paid at the gig. And just before we were going on there were about 70 other people there but they were right at the back of the room waiting for the indie disco. That’s an amazing feeling when you come off stage after giving your all to four people in this room, and then the second you stop, 70 people come bouncing out of the shadows to ‘Girls and Boys’ by Blur. That’s a dark moment in a person’s life. We were flying to the States for another tour straight after from Oslo the next day. And I said, ‘Let’s just take it easy.’ And this girl walked up and said ‘Hello, we have come to see you from Finland,’ so like a 32 hour round trip to come and see us play. And then you can’t half arse it, can you?”
“The only thing I’ve actually been offended by in a live view that anybody’s ever written about us was when somebody accused me of ‘phoning it in’ at a show once. It’s like ‘I will fuck you up’. I have never phoned it in. It’s never happened. Even when I tried.”
As with their previous records, it’s an album packed with intensity and humour, its themes hinted at and sometimes open to interpretation. It wouldn’t be a mclusky album without a cracking title (in fact I first heard their music after seeing their debut album my pain and sadness is more sad and painful than yours in a record shop in Croydon and loving the title so much I bought it).
“I guess I love the sound of it. It’s got a defiance to it, I suppose and I suppose hope is part of the defiance. A defiance, but yeah, a horror to it as well. I mean, why do you need to say the world is still here? Surely that goes without saying.”
“When you write about something you want to write near it as opposed to on it. The more successful the music, the more on the nose it will be usually. Very successful music is usually just a nose – “I want to have sex with you”. Cool. Where’s the subtext there?”
The album is being released by Californian punk label Ipecac Records, who in Falco’s words have been “absolute darlings… but don’t tell the world because it’s not good for their reputation as being a label that makes you sick.”
“I do feel pressure in terms of doing right by the people who’ve worked with us on this record and bringing it closer to release, because they’ve put a real passion into it, which is really lovely. It’s nice when other people get excited about your thing. It can’t help but make you more excited about that thing, you know, unless you’re deliberately a dickhead.”
The intervening years since mclusky’s last album, the difference between me and you is that i’m not on fire (which received a reissues last year – read Falco’s thoughts on that record here), have brought with them a shift in the musical landscape. Loud, spiky guitar music with a sense of humour and a way with words is having a moment in the sun and mclusky have more and more frequently popped up as a reference point in reviews and interviews.
“Things have definitely changed since we were a band first time round,” Falco agrees. “I’m not saying we’ve been an influence to bands. We’ve been an influence to some bands, but a lot of the music which influenced us has been an influence to bands, sometimes through the conduit of us, but sometimes through the conduit of far more successful bands and that’s good. And most of the bands we play with these days are really good. Whereas back in the day, I would wouldn’t say that was the case. We were a fish, not even close to the water.”
“But there is more of an appetite for this record. People are happy it’s coming as opposed to ‘Who are these cunts?'”
And how does it feel for a band used to being on the outside to suddenly find themselves being appreciated by a wider audience?
“If anything it gives the whole thing even more energy and, not purpose, but just a little bit of excitement. Even when you approach art or rock music with very lofty aspirations or are really trying to make art, there’s just still something undeniably exciting about playing to a slightly bigger crowd who are slightly more enthusiastic. You’re back to being a teenager again. There are only contrarians who are deliberately trying not to be popular but I think the good bands or artists try to be popular on their own terms rather than engaging with the more general formula of what makes a person more popular.”
This shift has also brought about a change in dynamic when booking shows.
“We’re coming at it, for once, from a position of strength, because if you don’t have to do shows and somebody says, ‘Do you want to do this show, we’ll give you this amount of money,’ and you go, ‘Ah, don’t worry about it’. It’s not a negotiation if only one side’s asking. And so it meant that sometimes people go, ‘We’d like you to do this show,’ and offer for you the kind of money where you’d actually make money, which is not my personal history in music.”
“I mean, I can scrape together the living of a junior office manager in Huddersfield now. For music. And, you know, obviously there’s a huge amount of mockery in what I just said, but that’s actually great as well. I didn’t start making music, especially with these song titles, which are pretty much the only thing I’ll be remembered for, to make money. If it was a money making scheme it was very badly conceived, wasn’t it?”
Of course, Falkous has not been sitting on his heels for the past 20 years. After mclusky split he’s made a string of excellent records with Future of The Left, who are still going strong, as well as his solo project Christian Fitness. I wondered what made a song a mclusky song, rather than one for these other projects?
“Well, very simply,” he explains, “It’s just who writes them. If we write a song in a mclusky rehearsal, it’s a mclusky song and then we work out what we’re gonna do with it. Is it good? Yes. Is it right? Which is sometimes a different thing. Yes. Then it’s a song. If mclusky write a song which sounds like a Future of The Left song, it’s either going to be a B-side or it’s tough shit, you’ve got to go.”
“You could say that mclusky is maybe a simpler band, a bit more direct, whereas with Future of The Left there’s a little bit more space, it’s a bit bit more up its own arse, it’s a bit funkier, perhaps. But none of those things would be deal breakers. There’s a couple of songs on this new record that could be a Future of The Left song, I think, in terms of their sonic signatures. But ultimately, it’s the songs we did write together. And Christian Fitness, they’re the silly little mumblings I put together in this room, which I very much enjoy doing. I’ve got an album just about ready to go – I’ve got a history of self sabotage, but even by my standards releasing a Christian Fitness album in the middle of releasing a mclusky album would be an act of extreme dumbery.”
The album is followed by a string of live dates around the UK, before a handful of summer festival shows and then tours of Europe and Australia.
“I’m really looking forward to all of that. We did quite an extensive tour at the beginning of last year, huge American tour for us. We were away for a few weeks. We did Australia as well, but for us, even in May, doing nine shows, that’s super exciting. We are not a band who have been tired of being on the treadmill. And we’re not even a band who know all of the songs, and that is why it’s so exciting. This is rock music – if you go and see the LSO or whatever, you want those wankers to have rehearsed, right? That’s part of it. Rock bands that rehearse too much are just losers as far as I’m concerned. You’re meant to be getting to the next section and your adrenaline’s meant to be spiking because you’re not entirely sure if you know how to play it. That is rock music for me. You know, you’re always living on your talent or your wits. You can’t revise for a rock show. I’ve always been this, but in the last few years this has crystallised for me. I’m an in the moment fundamentalist. That doesn’t mean I’m addicted to gory thrill killings or whatever. It just means that if I’m doing something, just embrace the moment of it. You know, like I say, unless it’s resorting to gory thrill killings. I’m not into those as either a stabber or stabbee.”
And on that reassuring note our conversation comes to an end. What’s clear is that mclusky are back with a renewed energy, their intensity if anything enhanced by the time that’s passed since they last released an album. To my mind the world is still here and so are we is the album most mclusky fans were hoping for, still very identifiably the same band, while being anything but a rehash of former glories. It is a vital, dark, funny, ferocious record packed with songs to make you think, laugh and jump around the room just as their first three albums did for me in my 20s (though these days I might have to be careful not to put my back out).
the world is still here and so are we is out on 9th May via Ipecac Records. Get your copy on vinyl, cd or digital download from Bandcamp.
mclusky tour the UK in May ahead of summer festival shows, autumn dates across Europe and an Australian tour in the new year. Full details and tickets here.
mclusky: Instagram
Future of the Left (with occasional mclusky posts): Facebook
Article by Paul Maps
Photograph by Damien Sayell
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