Of all the bands that helped define the early 2000s to mount reforms over the past decade or so, one of the most exciting and surprising might have to be mclusky (strictly lowercase, please). The Wales-originated band’s trio of albums in the early aughts helped spawn a specific mutation of noisy, drippingly-sarcastic post-hardcore-punk music whose influence is still felt; and arguably the bands who tap into that historical ley line of passion remain among the best acts coming out of the UK and its environs today.
mclusky was and is the brainchild of Andrew Falkous, and even in the band’s absence, he proved he had plenty to create. As we covered in our preview, the 2005 dissolution of mclusky gave way to Future of the Left (capitals permitted), as well as Falco’s Christian Fitness “solo” project, which still featured mclusky drummer and longtime collaborator Jack Egglestone, one of the three members who form mclusky today. Rounding out the current lineup is Damien Sayell of The St. Pierre Snake Invasion on bass, whose heavy, fuzzy sound has been a boon to those who needed it across the fast 10-15 years; he brings more than enough fury to fit almost too perfectly in the lineup of the band. A picture of intensity, he thrashes around with his bass with the kind of untamed vigor that truly does justice to the songs, whipping beads of sweat all over. He’s also an accomplished photographer, and his tour diary quite frankly puts my own non-concert work to shame – the first time I spot Sayell on stage, he’s taking a few snaps with his Fuji camera before and after sound-checking his instrument and amp.
As tours-that-people-have-waited-20-ish-years-for go, this is about as ecstatic as one can imagine people can get, the fervor intensified by the fact that the band got to play a precious few shows last year before Falkous’ ears dictated other plans, only intensifying the yearning for those who had to wait a bit longer. As precautionary measures, he wears additional headphones during the band’s louder songs (read: most of them), and Egglestone is sequestered behind a series of thick plexiglass panels that restrain how his instrument carries across the immediate area of the stage. The band have sold out Cambridge’s Sinclair on a Friday night, and the journey to anywhere close to the front of the venue is pushy and compact, so full is the floor of the club. The gig boasts opening slots from locals Minibeast and Martha’s Vineyard Ferries; the latter is touring with mclusky, and both boast former members of Mission of Burma among their ranks.
As one might expect from a band with only four songs released anytime that might be considered “recent”, the show is a watershed moment for those who have waited ages for this gig, as well as those [like myself] slightly too young to have seen the band on their last pass through. They begin, winkingly, with ‘Fuck This Band’, a slow-burner where Falkous need not don his earphones – you can feel the realization sweep across the room, dozens thinking “this is really happening”, whilst listening to one of the most intentionally-tame songs the band has ever conceived, a reintroduction of sorts in this context, but also a forecast of the chaos to come. I’ll eschew the typical compulsion to chronicle the setlist bit by bit – suffice to say, they dive straight into a plethora of songs from mclusky do dallas and The Difference Between Me and You is That I’m Not on Fire, the band’s most enduring pair of works, also the ones due for two-decade birthday celebrations that have been heretofore impeded. For those who’ve had to subsist only on the mclusky live albums Falco has released in recent years – impeccably-mastered, worth the time even for those who normally avoid live recordings – this is something like a prophecy coming to fruition. The room gets moving early on, and seeing the mosh pit in front of him Falkous remarks: “take care of each other, even when it’s really funny not to.” Later he quips after one of the band’s louder cuts: “We’re mourning our Queen, we get to lash out,” the ensuing smile impossible to fully keep from his face.
Two of the new mclusky tracks – the ones that share the A/B-side names of their 2023 single – appear throughout the set. At the first, ‘Unpopular Parts of a Pig’, Falkous admits something to the effect of – “if you’ve listened to the song once on Bandcamp, you know the lyrics better than me.” But the performance is (far as I observe, people crashing into me on all sides, exactly as I’d hoped) flawless, and proof-positive that mclusky’s newer tracks fit wonderfully into their established canon. There’s some bleed-over as to what aesthetically makes a song a ‘mclusky song’ vs a ‘Future of the Left song’ vs a ‘Christian Fitness song’ – there are no hard and fast rules as far as I can see. ‘The Digger You Deep’ resembles FotL’s ‘Miner’s Gruel’ at a point, but still feels perfectly placed in the mclusky set. In any case, the music is up to snuff, and there’s a majority on the floor who know the new almost as well as the songs they’ve been piping through their headphones at concerning volume levels for ages.
Coming to ‘She Will Only Bring You Happiness’, Falkous makes sure to snarkily note that the song is a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual, for bands, adding a jab at Ryan Adams, who (like, unfortunately, so many others) fits the description in the chorus that the band turned into a fourth-wall-breaking refrain. And while two of the songs on their latest single, as well as the enduring mystery of ‘Stop Feeding the Houseplants’, don’t appear throughout the night, one further new song does – identified by astute setlist-watchers as ‘Et Tu, Edwards?’ “Tell me you’re famous without being famous” seems to go one of the verses, which is mutated slightly throughout the rest of the song.
Being in Boston, adopted home of the Irish(™ [appended sarcastically]), Falkous makes sure to apologize for actor Ray Winstone’s accent in Scorcese’s The Departed – this is, admittedly, not an issue that occurred to me at the time I watched the film which released when I was all of 14, but upon further review, it is quite nice for any of Winstone’s countrymen to acknowledge this truly bizarre misrepresentation, ultimately-benign though it may be. And in what is sure to be one of the least-impeded acts of American democracy in 2024, Falkous offers the audience a choice between ‘No Covers’ and ‘That Man Will Not Hang’ toward the end of the setlist. But as fate would demand, both Sayell and Falkous flub different parts of ‘No Covers’, so they abort the plan and play ‘That Man Will Not Hang’ instead, a cut that foreshadows the general skepticism of the music industry that would appear in FotL songs like ‘How to Spot a Record Company’.
The night ends with a final pair of deeply-anticipated songs: ‘Gareth Brown Says’ and ‘Whoyouknow’. The former contains what endures as one of the most strangely brutal insults of all time (“Your mother is a ballpoint pen thief,”) and the latter had the honor of closing do dallas in ‘02 with its unlikely singalong of “Your heart’s gone the color of Coca-Cola”. Even without the appended, once-hidden track of ‘Reviewing the Reviewers’, it ends a night of deliriously watching the improbable-nigh-impossible occur. mclusky are back, make no mistake – and you ought to see them if you can.
Photos and Review by Collin Heroux
