Quiz time for all you soap opera fans, which ITV soap star is a massive fan of mclusky (always lower case) but couldn’t go to see them last time they played Manchester and ended up selling me his tickets on Twitter? Answer below (what a reason to carry on reading!)
Well, it’s been a while, just over 20 years since mclusky version 1.0 fizzled out after the release of underrated third album The Difference Between Me and You Is That I’m Not on Fire, but they are back with a new, improved line-up, honed by a substantial number of gigs since 2014, and they’ve now bit the bullet and brought out a whole new set of tunes.
And like a thrashier Half Man Half Biscuit, the first thing to do even before putting the needle to the vinyl, is peruse and breathe in those song titles. There’s so much joy to be had in “the battle of los angelsea” and “juan party-system” (you’ll have your own favourites) there’s obviously so much trouble taken over them, making them so humorous.
They commence on relatively safe ground with ‘unpopular parts of a pig’ as an opener, as it was one half of their comeback single having been out for a while, and it’s as snotty and speedy as they ever were with vocalist Falco‘s staccato vocal over a thrash, whereas ‘cops and coppers’ is almost funky by comparison, we are now truly up and running.
If you’re old enough to get the reference for the title on ‘way of the exploding dickhead” then congratulations, you’re just the demographic that this album is aimed at, it is one of the tracks that sails close to the older material, with its swirling, surging kinda chorus of choppy guitars, its vintage mclusky and surely that’s what we want out of this record.
The band themselves say that they found it difficult to get the tone of the record, of where and how it needed to exist, and how it was important to them “not to cos-play the past” and whilst there are the odd flourishes that remind you of certain songs that have gone before, there’s no sign of any rehashing or nostalgia, it’s all fresh meat.
Like all good growers, there’s nothing that hits instantly, everything takes a listen or two to beseech the consciousness, it’s a layered set of songs, with recent single ‘people person’ another with flourishes of a snarling Falco, “I’m just a normal man, not a people, people, people person” and there’s lots of evidence in that in his words and attitude. “I am totally finе with the use of my picture in your pamphlеts/
If in turn you will paint me like your piglets” on ‘chekhov’s guns’ a fine example of his love of the absurd.
They’ve kept it slimline, just 13 songs over 34 minutes, and not an ounce of fat on any of them. ‘kafka-esque novelist franz kafka’ (another glorious title) could have come straight from their most commercial record, album number two Mclusky Do Dallas (pre-lower case days) and it’s easy to see why the likes of Idles cite them as such an influence on their sound.
“First I was a pain in the arse then I was a crab in a tale as old as time” before some proper actual tuneful singing on the catchy ‘the digger you deep‘ has all the hallmarks of being a live favourite, and the more listens you give it, the less it feels like we’ve had to wait sooo long for it, it’s a natural successor from where they left off all those years ago, it’s just a joy that when we need some snarling succour in our lives, they’ve come to provide it. It may well be be a different line up, but a mclusky line-up have never sounded so cohesive as this current three-piece.
The frenetic pace finally drops a touch on the menacing ‘not all steeplejacks’, which has Falco almost chanting over a twang and a simple drumbeat, before things come to a lounge-like end on the creepy ‘hate the polis’.
A record that seemed unlikely up until recent times, given what’s gone before, and its creators are in no mood to let anyone, least of all a fanbase that adores them, down. The world loves them and is their bitch, and it’s delighted to have them back.
P.S – it was Todd Grimshaw from Corrie…
