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Future Of The Left - The Plot Against Common Sense

  • Written by  Ben Dufton

It’s amazing. It truly is. How every time you think it can’t be any better than the last one, it is.

I’m going to try and be good, as I get the feeling certain members of Future Of The Left are a bit bored with continuing references to their former bands. So this is the only reference to the fact that Andy “Falco” Falkous, Jack Egglestone, Jimmy Watkins and Julia Ruzicka have all previously been in other bands (some of them you may have heard of).  

What I would really like to do with this review is just quote Falco’s lyrics. It’s all there, the cutting one-liners, the chants that I imagine will gain a religious fervour at shows. However, I suppose I’d better tell you about how it actually sounds…

It’s a bigger, meatier sound than on previous albums. Whereas previously tracks would be either guitar or keyboard based, now they’re melded together to make something more potent. Such progress was hinted to on last years Polymers Are Forever EP (of which the titular track is the only to appear here). The drums bludgeon ('Sheena Is A T-Shirt Salesman') and the bass roils and menaces ('Beneath The Waves An Ocean'). The guitars cut and the keys add an impression of mental instability ('Cosmos Ladder'). “As before”, I hear you propose. Yes, as before, but with the band's expansion, there is the scope for more to be happening at any one time. Again, imagine the aural assault live…

The Plot Against Common Sense feels all at once the most accessible yet most dangerous Future Of The Left album - maybe it’s that accessibility that makes it so dangerous. Once more (last time I make you use your imagination, honest), consider a world where Falco has the same reach and influence as Chris Martin or even “daddy” Mumford - not that I’ve ever heard him say anything meaningful.  Falco, however, has some good points about a great many things – including, but not exclusive to, mass manufactured fashion ('Sheena Is A T-Shirt Salesman'), the sedentary nature of the general populous ('Failed Olympic Bid'), footballers and their lifestyles ('Goals In Slow Motion'), plastics ('Polymers Are Forever'), and franchise films and their audiences ('Robocop 4 – Fuck Off Robocop'). Oh, and there are a couple of references to last years riots too ('City Of Exploded Children' and 'Sorry Dad, I Was Late For The Riots').

Anyway, I can’t resist - here is where I share the good word(s). Buy it. It’s great.

“You’ve got funding/Well I’ve got facts/On a training program for type two diabetes”

“Run to Dixons/Sons of Hackney”

“Old stones/Collected/In plastic bags on a bloody aisle/Then placed in rows on the ocean floor/Your friends/Polymers”

“George Lucas won’t be kicking his heels/’Til he makes some money from Howard the Duck”

“History is written by the man who stays acquainted/With the thug who has the biggest sword”

“Going bald was the new Nirvana/Staying out late was the new Nirvana/Dressing your child as a prostitute/Was the quickest route to fame/Girls Aloud were the new Nirvana/Then any old shit was the new Nirvana”

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