You know what’s harder to find than the ghost of Lord Haw-Haw chatting up Harry Styles in a brawler pub in green and pleasant mugger-happy Croydon? A good British noise rock band. Names get batted about—Fudge Tunnel, Vile Imbeciles, Jockstrap, Wales’ Mandy, Indiana—but none of them sound like noise rock to me. Frankly, they sound like ponces.
But seek, and ye shall find, and there is an authentic noise rock band in the UK, and they hail from Cardiff, Wales. Mclusky (Andy Falkous on vocals and guitar, Jonathan Chapple on bass and vocals, and Matthew Harding on drums) are my idea of a noise rock band, insofar as they sound like the Midwestern bands (Cows, Killdozer, Scratch Acid/the Jesus Lizard and Big Black, although Steve Albini’s drum machine fetish always put me off) that changed my life during noise rock’s Golden Age, which dates from the early eighties to the late nineties, or up the present day if you include Pissed Jeans and Mclusky. Flipper and early No Trend are honorary members.
That’s not very many bands, and the reason is that I’m a noise rock purist. To my way of thinking, a great noise rock band must include the following: 1) a rumbling bass that makes you feel like a claw hammer is removing your tonsils, but in a good way. 2) Impossibly loud guitars that stretch the limits of feedback and bad attitude. 3) Vocalists who are either hilariously foghorn loud lyrics geniuses (Killdozer’s Michael Gerald), criminally insane bugle blasters (Cows’ Shannon Selberg), or not quite as criminally insane live show menaces (the Jesus Lizards’ David Yow).
Finally—and this one is absolutely essential—they have to make me laugh. If I’m not laughing, I’m not listening to a great noise rock band. Recommended listening: Killdozer’s “Hamburger Martyr,” Cows’ cover of “Shaking All Over,” Jesus Lizards’ “Mouth Breather,” and to throw a bone to the guys keeping great noise rock alive, Pissed Jeans’ “Boring Girls.”
When people ask for an example of quintessential noise rock humor (which they never do), I solemnly recite these lyrics from Killdozer’s “Hamburger Martyr”:
“You call this a hamburger?
Well, I don’t call this a hamburger
Hell, I can make a better hamburger with my asshole.”
I was tempted to review 2004’s The Difference Between Me and You Is That I’m Not on Fire based on the album title alone—it’s archetypal noise rock humor. But song for song, Mclusky Do Dallas is better—indeed, it’s a noise rock masterpiece. The trio gives us tunes like “No New Wave No Fun,” “What We’ve Learned,” “Day of the Deadringer,” “To Hell with Good Intentions,” and “The World Loves Us and Is Our Bitch.” They’re all noise rock gold. You also get a couple more noisy ones that aren’t as good. And then you get a few songs that don’t meet my noise rock criteria but are as cool as Kim Carnes, nonetheless.
“No New Wave No Fun” features a bass set to “shake down buildings”—Andy Falkous’ vocals are set to “shriek.” “What We’ve Learned” is all bass rumble and dissonant guitars; the lyrics may not be much to write about, but Falkous’ stutter is sublime. “Day of the Deadringer” features staccato vocals and more shaking-down-the-roofbeams bass. Oh, and the classic line “If I had to give you something, then I think I’d give you nothing.”
“To Hell with Good Intentions” features lots of bass rumble and guitar feedback: Falkous has great big fun repeating the lines “My love is bigger than your love, sing it!” And several lines make me really happy. “We take more drugs than a touring funk band.” And, “When we gonna torch the restaurant? (Sing it!)/When we gonna pay the guide dog? (Sing it!).”
“The World Loves Us and Is Our Bitch” has enough bass and more for seventeen James Taylor albums, Falkous does some more stutter rocking and screams like he’s being eaten by piranhas, and goes berserk singing “Love is eternal ‘til it isn’t any more.”
As for the rest of the album, you get the from quiet to deafening loud “Alan is a Cowboy Killer,” on which Falkous goes from normal to deranged in less time than it takes to fall through an open manhole. The verses (something about the making of a porn movie) and the chorus/title seem to have nothing to do with one another, but it’s a thing of wonder how Falkous repeats that title at the end until he’s at risk of spontaneously combusting.
Falkous is on his best behavior on “Fuck This Band.” Sings nicely (Mogwai style) over a very polite bass. But the melody is fetching, and the song includes the wonderfully sarcastic lines “Fuck this band/’Cos they swear too much/It’s an obvious ploy/And irresponsible.”
Crowd-pleaser “Lightsabre Cocksucker Blues” reminds me of the Butthole Surfers—Falkous sings all by his lonesome, then the band comes in like a shrieking F16 nose-plunging into your living room. And back and forth they go until Falkous goes full nutter, like a guy you wouldn’t want to meet on a well-lighted street at rush hour because frankly, he doesn’t care if there are witnesses.
There are more (“Gareth Brown Says” is tres cool), but the point is this—I never thought I’d hear another noise rock album like this one, but had mournfully resigned myself to the dubious charms of dissonant freak guitar bands like Lightning Bolt. The sad thing is that Mclusky’s later albums are tamer, although they include wonderful ear-abusers like “Kafka-esque Novelist Franz Kafka,” “Unpopular Parts of a Pig,” and the positively titanic “Support Systems.”
Noise rock never conquered the world for obvious reasons, the chief being that very few people can put up with it. It’s too abrasive for most well-adjusted individuals, and that’s okay. Still, it’s a pity, because as somebody once told me, normal is a setting on a washing machine. Me, I’m not a washing machine, and maybe you aren’t either (so give Mclusky Do Dallas a listen).
We noise rock fans may be tools, but we’re not appliances.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
