Future of the Left - Travels with Myself and Another

Travels with Myself and Another

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1. Arming Eritrea
2. Chin Music
3. The Hope That House Built
4. Throwing Bricks At Trains
5. I Am Civil Service
6. Land Of My Formers
7. You Need Satan More Than He Needs You
8. That Damned Fly
9. Stand By / Your Manatee
10. Yin / Post-Yin
11. Drink Nike
12. Lapsed Catholics

Wooooeuuughharrrgh. I dismissed these guys as long haired beer swilling louts (lol hypocriseez) back when I saw them at Belsonic. They had a few decent tunes, but more often than not it just appeared noise. A bassist that terrorizes the audience is all very well....but music's good, too. This album however, is a stomper. Arming Eritrea grabs you from the offset and doesn't let up, it's snarl of "Come on Rick, i'm not a prize/I'm not a cynical one of those guys" will probably cause me to associate it with my da, but it's a fucking beast. The arrogance of the verse splurges into the At The Drive In style chorus/rest of the song, it's truly wonderful. Instead of dumb ballsy rock there's some actual emotion here, and it's a tune as well. Off to a good start.

The Hope That House Built is pretty much a damned march into hell, "Come join come join our lost cause". Class. It's one of those ones that slowly but surely gets into your head, maybe not on first listen.....but it'll happen.
Another indication that this isn't just another letspickupguitargokk album is the sense of humour throughout. I can't imagine someone running these lyrics past bandmates. Throwing Bricks At Trains, for example; "Slight/bowel movements/preceeded/the bloodless coup" Indeed.
You Need Satan More Than He Needs You builds up tension and angst like a group of youngsters being told they can't go into Indianaland juuuust yet. FUCK. Genuinely menacing, with a Jesus Lizard style bassline and atmosphere, it's....distburbing. Great fun.

Drink Nike takes the energy of bands like Drive Like Jehu and At The Drive In and adds red bull. It's tense and jittery, and a tuuune. It's always on the brink of being noise, but it's actually very clever rock. It's all delivered in 2 or 3 minutes bites of catchiness, and before you can linger on the last one, the next one's begun. You're being sonically raped, but i'm sure you've been sonically raped before. You whore.

Lapsed Catholics.....haha. This is genuinely funny. It isn't particularly contrived, it's just very random and funny. Hands up who was busting to correct him at the Morgan Freeman bit....(you need to listen for this to make sense). Also, the line, "A Justice of sorts if you listen to fools who have dressed in the dark for a bet" has to be one of the lines of the year so far. It's not very deep or meaningful....it's just funny. And not cheesy, and before the witty bant has outstayed its welcome, we get some more razor sharp guitar lines to see us out.

Travels with Myself and Another is brief at 12 songs in 32 minutes, but it ensures that Future of the Left don't outstay their welcome. The only downside of this may be that this will take a few listens for particular songs to sink into your head, one listen will usually leave you going "Wow, this first song's class" and not absorbing much else. It's great fun though, some pretty arrogant rock in a pretty short space of time.

In the end, everybody wins.

8.4/10