File this one under “compound sentences I never imagined I would write”: Welsh noise rock trio mclusky have announced an American tour for 2024, following the release of their first new music in twenty years.
The first part of that statement is the less surprising one: the band originally announced a tour for 2022, to celebrate two decades of their landmark record mclusky do dallas, only to end up postponing it when singer and guitarist Andrew Falkous developed hearing issues that put a damper on their plans. Thankfully, Falco’s ears seem to be ready to make the trip for what will be their first full American tour in nearly two decades. The tour starts with a pair of West Coast dates in early March, then they’ll hop across to the opposite coast for a lengthy run that starts in New York, jumps east to the Boston area, then snakes around the central and eastern US to culminate in a gig at DC’s Black Cat.
The fact that Falkous has released new music is no surprise – after mclusky disbanded in the mid-2000s, he kept busy at the helm of Future of the Left, releasing five albums with them (most recently in 2016), and several more under his solo moniker Christian Fitness. He’s still as full of sonic notions and lyrical wit as ever – the shock is that it manifested as new mclusky. The initial reform of the band, tagged as mclusky*, seemed to suggest via the asterisk that it might be a touring-only reactivation. But that changed with the 2023 release of ‘The Digger You Deep’/’Unpopular Parts of a Pig’, a four-track single that gives a glimpse into what mclusky (sans asterisk) looks and sounds like now. Joining Falkous are longtime collaborator and drummer Jack Egglestone, as well as Damien Sayell, whose abrasive, thrashing St. Pierre Snake Invasion project no doubt scratched an itch for many who mourned mclusky’s absence.
Even the titles of these new tracks feel like a homecoming of sorts, joining long-time greats like ‘Fuck This Band’ and ‘Without MSG I Am Nothing’, to compile a very-much-not-exhaustive list. The flow of the four songs is well-structured: ‘Unpopular Parts’ comes out right at the top with a decidedly-mclusky riff that is as alive with personality as any they’ve ever written; Falco jumps in alternating between a coyly-affected voice and aggressive layered shouting across each verse. Sayell’s bass takes front and center, stomping through ‘The Digger You Deep’, and then comes ‘Fan Learning Difficulties’, laced in absurdist truisms and life advice: “Keep writing letters to the Queen although she died last summer!” This one sounds like it might be destined to fit as part of a medley mid-set with ‘No New Wave No Fun’, as it breaks erratically near the end into a familiar chorus from that song. We’ll see if this theory proves true when mclusky embarks on tour in early March.
The odd one out of the four is ‘that was my brain on elves’ – it’s a quiet affair, and reflective of a tendency Falco has honed since mclusky’s initial dissolution of tempering the characteristics intensity of the music with short periods of purposeful calm (see: FotL’s ‘French Lessons’ or ‘The Contrarian’). There’s also the notable absence of ‘Stop Feeding the Houseplants’, a song that snuck onto their two-part live album Gateway Band in demo form. While the band’s upcoming tour is likely to fulfill the original plan of paying tribute to do dallas (and now can double as the 20th-anniversary tour for The Difference Between Me and You Is That I’m Not On Fire), it will be curious to see exactly where these new entries in their canon slot in among old favorites.
mclusky North America 2024 Tour Dates:
3/04 | Los Angeles, CA | The Echoplex
3/05 | San Francisco, CA | Rickshaw Stop
3/07 | Brooklyn, NY | Warsaw
3/08 | Cambridge, MA | The Sinclair
3/09 | Philadelphia, PA | Underground Arts
3/11 | Pittsburgh, PA | Spirit Hall
3/12 | Toronto, Ontario | Lee’s Palace
3/13 | Grand Rapids, MI | The Pyramid Scheme
3/15 | Chicago, IL | The Vic
3/16 | Minneapolis, MN | First Avenue
3/18 | Nashville, TN | The Basement East
3/20 | Atlanta, GA | The Masquerade
3/21 | Carborro, NC | Cat’s Cradle
3/23 | Washington, D.C. | Black Cat
‘The Digger You Deep’/’Unpopular Parts of a Pig’ is available via Bandcamp here.
Words by Collin Heroux
Photo Credit to Keira Anee