Interview: mclusky
There's a challenge then to live up to the past, and not just with the audience, but with yourselves as well.
mclusky have just returned with their long awaited new album the world is still here, and so are we and it is a welcome return for the band, with their intensity, energy and wit firmly still in place on the brilliant album. To celebrate the release of the world is still here, and so are we, Gavin Brown caught up with mclusky vocalist / guitarist Andrew “Falco” Falkous to talk about the creation of the record, how excited he is for mclusky to be back in 2025 and more in a fascinating interview.
E&D: The new album, the world is still here, and so are we has just been released. How does it feel for you to be back with this album?
Falco: Very, very exciting. It feels really lovely, as I’m sure you know, having probably talked to a lot of rock bands, there’s some bands who have plans, and there’s some bands who don’t have plans. They kind of just amble around and records happen. We’re kind of in between, because we’ve got a lot going on in our lives with children, and it makes it a very different existence as a band when you have to balance child care with loudly shouting at people on stage morally and administratively, but it is really exciting. It’s nice to release an album and to go on tour. It’s a little bit old fashioned in some senses, but it feels good.
E&D: This has been your first new album in twenty years. What led to the band coming back with this record?
Falco: The reason for doing it is because you want to do it, and the people in the room like doing it. But it felt, especially when we toured the States, like there was an appetite for it, in a way that it hadn’t really been like before. With the first run of mclusky, we were outsiders in all kind of senses, we didn’t fit anywhere, because we’re not a punk band, per se, but we were not an indie band. We don’t fit in the hard rock or metal thing. We just felt like a little bit displaced, certainly in the UK, maybe we would have had more of a constituency in the States, maybe. But now it just feels as if there are lots of bands not influenced by us exactly, but lots of bands who maybe would have, certainly heard us, like we did with The Jesus Lizard, and stuff like that, taking that as an influence, whereas when we were originally playing, there wasn’t really a lot of things out like that.
E&D: Do you feel that the legend of the band has grown since you’ve been away?
Falco: Yeah, almost certainly it has. That feels right, certainly to me as the songwriter, it felt as if we didn’t get much attention at the time. I’m sure working musician or artist thinks that their special creation deserves a prime focus from the inhabitants of the cultural world, but in our case, we definitely felt ignored. That’s kind of the building blocks of the band. We felt ignored in Cardiff, we didn’t really fit into any scene or group of people, and really, when we took that to a theoretically wider audience, the same thing happened. We didn’t really play with anybody. We didn’t support anybody. It felt like every little gain in crowd, when we come back to a different place, it felt like we were doing it in a really, in a really piecemeal way. It grew very slowly, and it feels the same to a degree now, but now we’ve got a different challenge, because you talk about the legend of the band. Now, what we’re fighting is the power of nostalgia, because it’s very easy to just reset to what was, and to see this is just a little appendix at the end of the story. It gives you certain advantages, I think, of a band of our size. We’re not big enough to create our own critical mass. There’s a challenge then to live up to the past, and not just with the audience, but with yourselves as well.
E&D: Has the feedback been good so far for you?
Falco: Yeah, I mean, people don’t generally give me negative feedback because they think I can be a bit of a fucking animal verbally. But yeah, I’m fine with it, you want people to like it, but you don’t want to beg them to like it. There are some bands, the way they promote themselves online, and I get it, they’ve been conditioned to think you have to go out and and beg for views or put up any kind of content just to just to get people engaging with you on some level. I don’t think you have to do. I don’t really judge people on what they do to promote their music, because I know that they’re trying to get attention in just a sea of millions of voices, but the fact that there’s too much music, that’s not true. People should be able to make music. Maybe there’s too many people promoting their music. Maybe that’s a different distinction.
E&D: How do you feel about using social media for the band? Obviously it wasn’t around to the same degree as when mclusky first came out.
Falco: There are elements of it which feel natural. Posting up a new song, for example, is a natural way, for me at least, to use social media at times. Back several years ago, when I used to use Twitter, it felt natural to me. Sharing Instagram doesn’t work well so well for me personally, because I’m not a visually led person. I don’t like seeing photographs of my own face. I barely take photographs of other things, and I just find Instagram confusing, whereas Twitter just short written messages that kind of worked me just to make a stupid observation about the world or whatever. But there comes a point where you feel as if you’re saying something, just for the sake of saying something, or making some kind of observation, just as an as an excuse to share the live dates which aren’t selling very well. So it feels sometimes as if the conversation can be dishonest, but I think looking at it more generally, I think people like the fact that you engage at least as yourself on social media, and occasionally, if you are selling something, at least you can be direct and self deprecating about it, I think that works.
E&D: How was the actual experience of making and recording the record with Damien being in the band now?
Falco: It was really easy. We didn’t have as much time as we would have liked to write or to record. But there was a period of maybe six months, once we started rehearsing properly, where it felt hard to zero in on what worked. And by zero, I mean you just write and write and write, and then at the end of a period, you look back at what you’ve got and you think about it, and it was good, but it wasn’t quite sure of itself. Then all of a sudden it clicked. This is what happens in my experience with records, there’s almost like a valve that you need to loosen so everything can start flooding through properly. That happened with this record. The only problem is we could only rehearse twice a month, because of various commitments. Damien and I live in Bristol. Jack lives still in Penarth near Cardiff, so quite a bit of travel amongst various jobs and various childcare situations. The recording was lovely, Otterhead Studios, which is near Rugby. Really idyllic place to record, and just easy. Ant Chapman and Ellis, who we were recording with, just make you feel very comfortable. Recording is as much an active psychological conditioning as it is the environment and the actual recording. It’s all about being put and putting yourself in the right frame of mind to record. With sports, some players need an arm around the shoulder. Some, I mean, Damien works almost entirely on the basis of you taking the piss out of him. He is fuelled by that! I don’t really know what motivates Jack. He just exists as the greatest drummer I’ve ever met, just hanging around, being very easy going. It helps when everybody in the band is essentially very easy going as well. I can’t really say that about myself! I’m clearly not always the easiest person to work with, but I’m always focused on making it happen.
E&D: Is the self deprecating humour you mentioned earlier an important factor of the new album?
Falco: Just a bit, it’s just the people who make up the band really, what I write, it’s what bounces off the other members of the band and if I wrote something which sounded too vulnerable or macho on the other side of the coin, the other guys would look at me like, that’s not it mate, or it just wouldn’t feel right in the room. There’s never anything as a band that we’re trying to communicate. Nobody ever sits down and says, let’s write about the International Monetary Fund. There’s never any of that. It’s just what happens in the room, when it goes right, it ends up being representative of the people in the room. The trick is to do that as much as possible. I’ve been writing songs for years that sometimes you think, right, I really want to write a really catchy song or I want to write a heavy song, or whatever. I can tell you that’s never worked. I’ve never gone in to write a particular song and successfully written that kind of song. You just need to put yourself in this position. You put your hands on the instrument and you just go for it. You put yourself in an environment where it can happen, and if it doesn’t happen, then so be it. And for the humour, yeah, it’s just part of us. Hopefully it’s not worn like a crown, because if there’s a good way to make sure a band doesn’t sell records, it’s to highlight the humour or the intelligence aspect, people don’t like to be told, especially intelligence, people don’t like to be told something is intelligent because it’s like they’re going to be patronised by it or something.
E&D: With the return of mclusky, what band would you love to see get back together?
Falco: The cliche thing would be to say Fugazi I guess. But I don’t know, I don’t want to see a band unless they really want to be there on the stage. That’s the thing for me. There’s been a few reunions over the last few years. Not to name them. They name themselves in our memories, where it was clearly for the money, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I just don’t really want to see it. If money is your prime motivation for anything, then you’re probably not going to enjoy yourself. Reuniting, people should just enjoy making music.
E&D: How was the experience of making the video for the album track ‘chekovs guns’ with Remy Lamont?
Falco: Really fun. I never really wanted to be a performer when I was young and I never really wanted to be a singer. I wanted to be a guitarist, and I, kind of, wanted to be off to the side. I didn’t want particularly want any attention. I think there are certain singers in bands that can really sell their face being there. They can sell performing the song. They can act the song for the camera. Basically, I can sell a song in a live environment because I’ve had a lot of practice at it. I feel very comfortable there. I’ve never felt very comfortable in a recorded environment like that. In this case, I was shanghaied into it a little bit. It was like, oh, we’ll just film you in a mirror. I didn’t feel completely uncomfortable with it, because there were, also in the first video, way of the exploding dickhead, so many other things occurring, that I felt I could exist in it without feeling ridiculous. In the end, it was fine. and a lot of fun. Remys passion for the various videos is so intense that to not perform would have felt like letting him down. It’s so lovely when you’ve been a band and you’ve been working through stuff for ages, and even though you know people like the band, you very much feel alone. You feel self contained. When other people, whether that’s Ipecac or Rarely Unable, who’ve done the press for the album or Remy, get on board, and they clearly just love engaging with it as much as you do, it makes you feel really special. The video itself is a proper work of art. I think it’s fantastic, and it’s great to be involved with that as well, and for someone like me, I am an old dog in a musical sense, you can teach me new tricks. I was prepared to go and dress up like a fucking idiot and and sing along to the song. The problem is, you lose your voice because you can’t mime. If you’re miming it, it looks like you’re mining so you’ve got to sing. So, I sang the song twenty five times or something. Doing a video traditionally is a really good way to make sure that you fucking hate a song by the end of the process!
E&D: You mentioned Ipecac there. You’re releasing the album on the label. How did you link up with them?
Falco: We released a small EP in 2023 to raise money for our US visas, because US visas are not cheap, for an upcoming tour and Mark from Ipecac got in contact with me and that was it really, that’s the story. I’m not, not really a label guy, but the way they do business is fantastic, it’s very straightforward and it’s a great fit.
E&D: Are you looking forward to hitting the stage again with this new material?
Falco: Very much so, and we’ve got several more gigs to announce. They’ll be in October and November. There’s going to be twenty shows in Europe and more British shows towards the end of the year. I’m desperate to be back on stage. Onstage is where I feel the most comfortable. I love performing for people, and I can’t wait. I feel incredibly lucky, and we’re going through a period at the moment where people generally, myself included, don’t have a lot of money and ticket sales are relatively slow so people are buying tickets at the last minute and, I really don’t say this lightly or insincerely, it’s really flattering that at a time when people don’t have a lot of money they’d spend, close to thirty pounds on a ticket to see you play silly rock songs, that gives me a responsibility to not let people down, or want to give people the best rock show they see that year, and I take that responsibility very seriously indeed. It’s very important to me.
E&D: What are some of your favourite gig memories with the band over the years?
Falco: There’s so many. A lot of the memories tend to be involve somebody just saying something from the crowd and you responding to it. To a degree, the songs take care of themselves. You play the songs so much, a lot of the aspect of them is the performance and enjoying them as well. There is actually a function in not being over rehearsed, because then you really can just go through the motions of playing a song a lot of times. I like being in the moment. I like that challenge of it. Lots of memories playing two sold out shows in Melbourne in a row. It’s very difficult for me to top the show we did in Chicago last year. It was just incredible! The idea that we play a venue like that, the Vic theatre, this gorgeous, huge venue, the idea that about 1000 people would turn up to see us play. I’ve had many of the best nights of my life in those environments, and I’ve had some great shows playing to twelve people or to four people.
