Andy Falkous, the outspoken frontman for Welsh provocateurs Future of the Left, has delivered a furious on-line rant, aimed at the writer behind a review of the band’s third album, The Plot Against Common Sense.
FasterLouder spotted the post in which Falkous goes to town on Pitchfork scribe Ian Cohen after he gave the latest Future of the Left record, The Plot Against Common Sense, an uncharacteristically rounded score of 6 and a middling review.
Though Cohen begins by stating that Falkous “is something of a personal hero”, he goes on to critique the record for its “corporate-slick production” and that “things take a wicked, face-shielding turn about halfway through.” Wishing that Falkous, “would pick on someone his own size.”
There’s more to his verbose, 850 word review that is less-than-pleasant about the album’s lyricism and subject matter, but boiling it down, Cohen spends time comparing The Plot Against Common Sense against much of Falkous’ previous band, McLusky, and their back catalogue. The final kiss-off cautioning that the incendiary singer is “threatening to become the kind of willfully delusional lunkhead that Mclusky songs eviscerated.”
Responding to “Mr. Cohen” on his blog, Falkous begins with a pre-script that begins , “a man may feel compelled to stand up (or sit, in my case) against what he feels is a great injustice and exhibit his right to reply,” and reply he does.
He dismisses Cohen calling him a hero, or, as he calls it “the ham-fisted arse-kissing of your opening.” Before saying, “allow me to efuckidate in an easy-to-understand fuck-by-point manner.”
Falkous proceeds to pick apart Cohen’s review point-by-point in a manner no less wordy, but certainly more entertaining, riposte. Dismissing the Pitchfork writer’s claims of “corporate slick” as hypocritical for a website that runs off corporate advertising (“Oh … it has moving pictorials and everything”); while responding to the negative appraisal to his lyrics thusly; “I can honestly say that, whatever you think of the music, that the lyrics on The Plot Against Common Sense are the best I’ve written (and yes – in either band) by a factor of FUCK LOADS.”
Falkous leaves no criticism unturned, concerning track “Robocop 4 – Fuck Off Robocop!”, which Cohen calls one of the “worst songs” of 2012, they should “agree to disagree.” Before adding a cutting, ” if it is truly amongst the worst songs of the year then I am a giant bat and Pitchfork a cave into which I will shit golden effigies of your face.”
Finally Falkous, likens Cohen’s comparisons between his current band and McLusky, his old outfit, to a “burning nostalgia for a lost teenage love has been replaced by an uncontrollable hatred for her and her new, happy life.” Before adding, “Cohen is effectively reviewing an album from ten years ago by a band that no longer exists.”
The Future of the Left frontman then closes with a typically snarky exit, “it’s like we’ve reached the end of a line, you and I … a line we walked together when I never even knew that you existed. I’m sorry. I hope you find solace in the ten-year anniversary re-release.”
There’s been no response from either Ian Cohen or Pitchfork yet, and the spat between the two raises some interesting points about music journalism. Are Cohen’s points valid? Are Falkous responses necessary? Is there a value to criticism that gives voice to this kind of discussion.
If nothing else, let’s hope there is some further correspendence, or at the very least some good-old fashioned, muddied, word-slinging.
…our money’s on Falkous.
