(previously published on ArtsHub)
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Future Of The Left
'Polymers Are Forever'
(Remote Control)
The only thing in the world more exciting than getting my hands on Future Of The Left’s hot new six-song EP is that I, amongst a few thousand friends, will be seeing them at Meredith in a couple of weeks – that and the fact they’ve got an album out early next year. With FOTL there’s never a pang of ‘what if it’s not as good as the last one’ as they are and ever will be a band at the cutting edge of wit and social commentary. More than that here (and more to the point), their deformed structures and perverted guitar stabs act as cruel extensions of their wrath.The EP opens with possibly the most overblown Mike Patton-esque theatrics we’ve seen from Falco (no minor accomplishment) and this buzzsaw bass and keyboard combination. The title track is so fuckin’ sexy, subversive and far beyond anywhere they’ve been thus far, you’ll be jamming it on repeat and rendered useless for the next 20 minutes or so. (Hint: if you’re suffering at work, take it into the dunny and bliss out for half an hour – a definite anger buster.) Once you get past the opener, you’re grabbed around the throat by the rapido punk gem that is ‘With Apologies To Emily Pankhurst’, which comes about as close to Mclusky’s ‘Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues’ in tempo as FOTL have managed yet (though I’m certain Falco would despise the comparison).
The thing bounces along through the mid-section and third number ‘New Adventures’, despite lacking in the instrumental dynamics of the previous two, rewards in a purely lyrical sense: The daughter had his laugh/ but not his smoker’s cough/ it must have been the lack of tar in heroin. ‘My Wife Is Unhappy’ brings a delicate guitar line into a keys-heavy listen and also that sick feeling that FOTL are on the edge of eruption – it burns slowly but with intense heat.
The final couplet of ‘Dry Hate’ and ‘destroywhitechurch.com’ boil over and inject the memory of this listen with a bile-y combination of the stained cartoonish chest poking and out-and-out spleen bursting tantrums that only FOTL can deliver. This is as well-rounded-a punk EP as you’ll find anywhere right now and will result in much breath holding leading into their Meredith show and near-future album release. And that’s punk in the (proper) say what you fucking think subversive sense.
Samson McDougall
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