Listen to this while high: Future of the Left's Polymers are Forever EP.
Behind the buzz: Hyperliterate
Welsh provocateurs Future of the Left scored heavily with 2009's Travels with Myself and Another, so it
won't do to dismiss the Polymers are
Forever EP (out as of yesterday on Xtra Mile and streaming courtesy of Spin magazine here) as a stopgap between albums. Six songs that clock collectively in
at a mere 20 minutes might not seem like ideal stoner rock, but excited
squawks from the UK blogosphere indicate this fucker will blow the casual listener
though the wall.
Today's weed:
Private Reserve, an indica advertised down at the local dispensary as
containing a frightful percentage of raw THC calculated helpfully to two
decimal spaces.
Loud Times at Bedlam
High: The title track is hair-raising stuff -- as furiously goofy as an early
Red Hot Chili Peppers joint while offloading a message as wrist-slit depressing
as any nit Roger Waters ever picked off
his psyche. The second half is a glorious mic-check reiteration about how that plastic
bottle you just threw away is going to outlive you and the DNA you slobbered on it. At
1:46, "With Apologies to Emily Pankhurst" whips by like a chunk of hurled
pavement, with frontman Andy Falkous snarling like a buttsore payer of alimony. "New
Adventures" is a scabrous venture into consequences, and "My Wife is Unhappy"
narrates "the final, final, final, final, final, final thoughts of a man unused to joy" as
the poor fucker raves of Joe Pesci and crawling sainthood. "Dry Hate" is another
gobbet of venom spat at some elusive target, with the couplet "Think of us as
ready-made/ Jesus loves a renegade" as ponderable a Lennonism as I've heard in a
while. The song "destroywitchurch.com" is a bent political rant highlighted by the line
"I had no idea evil had such small ambition," which sums up the Falkous
worldview admirably.
Psychoactive verdict:
Despite its brevity, Polymers are Forever
is a textured and bracing artistic whole that hangs together better than most
recent full-lengths. The title track is set to appear on the band's third
album, The Plot Against Common Sense,
due out early next year.
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