Future of the Left – The Plot Against Common Sense

What little this album might have dropped in terms of pure adrenalin, it more than makes up for in ideas, tunes, cleverness and, sod it, fun. Which is why it’s great.

What little this album might have dropped in terms of pure adrenalin, it more than makes up for in ideas, tunes, cleverness and, sod it, fun. Which is why it’s great.

 

I’ve been hammering Future of the Left’s ‘Polymers Are Forever’ EP on the ipod ‘til its 1s were worn down to stubby baby’s fingers and its 0s as fragile as a long-sucked polo. And if The Plot against Common Sense doesn’t quite pick up where that left off, it goes into all sorts of other excellent places that are just as fascinating.
It doesn’t follow on because opener Sheena is a T-Shirt Salesman is a relatively straightforward two minute burst of energy. The sort of attack that the band provide live and which some will doubtless rue is missing from much of the rest of the album. They’d be wrong. Things start to get really interesting with Beneath the Waves an Ocean, the rolling, distorted Massive Attack rhythms and trademark catchphrase refrain straining with perfectly restrained power that’s all the more effective for being kept firmly on the leash. Cosmo’s Ladder has a familiar staccato swagger and it’s not the last album to echo songs from earlier records while building something new. City of Exploded Children in particular is musically a cousin to Curses!’s Fuck the Countryside Alliance but very pleasingly developed into Trumptonesque clockwork melody and martial harmonising. Lob in Robocop 4: Fuck Off Robocop’s electroshock spasms of noise, the overdriven organs and vocoder vocals of A Guide To Men and it’s so far, so terrifically tricky.
But there’s also the likes of Goals in Slow Motion – the sort of thing to send more po-faced Mcluskyites scurrying for the hills. Its perfectly executed punk-pop riffery might actually stand a chance of soundtracking that which its title describes were it not for snippets like ”…cos as racist strikers go my friend, you’re the best this club has sold.”. Which you suspect is pretty much the point. Cos for all that the roots of Future of the Left’s sound are in steely-eyed 80s hardcore, they have stood above their peers by being unafraid to be funny (and even sometimes a bit silly), musically as well as lyrically, in amongst their surreally barbed satirical assault. And when they from time to time do something that might remind you of more populist peers, (there’s a number of euphoric swells of noise which in other settings might just get the lighters out) they do it on their own terms and make it work.
What little this album might have dropped in terms of pure adrenalin, it more than makes up for in ideas, tunes, cleverness and, sod it, fun. Which is why it’s great.