Wales’ antidote to a mediocre music industry, Future of the Left, are back in action with a rocking new album, Travels With Myself and Another. Unfortunately for the band, the album was leaked three months prior to its release – the second time this has happened to them. Sadly, this situation has a very real knock-on effect for bands.

FOTL’s Andy – œFalco’ Falkous says in his MySpace blog: “Oh, and by the way, the next person, male or female, who accosts me at a show, incredulous at our lack of success then tells me that they illegally downloaded all of our music gets punched squarely in the tits. No exceptions. Be a feckless, short-sighted fucking thief all you like but self-righteous hypocrites with no sense of the absurd are valid, vapid targets.”

So if you want to see them out in Australia again…BUY the album. Crank it to 11 and enjoy. We caught up with Andy direct from his Cardiff flat to discuss the album, ill-attended gigs and Reverend and the Makers.

You were due to come out to Australia last year but it got cancelled. Are you planning to come back soon and show us some love?
Yeah, it looks like that’s going to happen around the turn of the year. I think we’re going to do the Falls Festival at the end of the year, but that isn’t officially confirmed yet – so if it all falls through, please blame somebody else.

Yeah, we were really disappointed that we had to cancel Australia, but it ended up working out in the sense that we got the record that we needed to keep the band and the momentum going. But without sounding like I’m kissing arse, I’ve been out there three times – twice with my old band and once with Future of the Left – and touring Australia really is a fantastic experience.

The new album, Travels With Myself and Another, was released last week. How do you think this has moved on from the debut album Curses?
It’s just more unconsciously developed, without sitting down and everybody getting out the checklist and marking down things we thought we should do. Curses is a really good angular rock record, which has a lot of space in it at times. It’s kind of deliberately a little bit piecemeal…whereas the new record is, if I may use the word, more of a romp.

It’s just 33 minutes, and it doesn’t really let up. We just wanted to make it so that all of the fat was trimmed away. I mean, Curses is kind of over-imbued with really long intros and weird guitar solos. But I just thought we could make [ Travels With Myself and Another ] have even more economy of sound, you know? No excess.

What track off the new album was the most fun to make?
It was all great fun, although the song Throwing Bricks At Trains is particularly fruity, pretty much because it was all written in the studio. But I think more so because of how much Jack [Egglestone] was grinning when he played it. Of course people in bands like – and in some cases even love – the music they play. It’s essential, especially if you’re going to go round the fucking world and play it 250 times a year, but the look on that man’s face while he was playing that song was delicious. You could take him home and introduce him to your pet lizard. It invoked so much; I’ll literally never forget it. He looks like an extra from 300 at the best of times anyway, so you can imagine a gay, happy extra from 300 and that was pretty much the look he was rocking.

You’re quite vocal on MySpace and do quite a lot of blogging, have you been lured into Twitter yet?
No, that’s about eight steps too far for me. Just thinking of what the most interesting and dynamic people are doing on an hourly basis for me, it’s like what do you say? “About to have a shit”? “Reading a book”? “Michael Jackson is dead”, “Former Soldier Soldier star Robson Green is presenting an extreme fishing show – I don’t like it”? The minute run-down of my life is barely interesting to me, so I struggle to see how it’d be interesting to Carl from Tennessee, you know?

Are there any bands coming up in the British music scene that you think we should check out?
Well, we play with two bands. One is from Manchester called Kong, who are very noisy. You’re hardly going to be leaving a show whistling their pop tunes, – œcos they don’t really have any – but it’s desperately dark, evil music and they dress like, well I don’t even know, people with melted faces.

And there’s another band, Pulled Apart From Horses, who we just toured with. They are a really good band, really quite Sabbathy. Lots of running around in tight trousers, if that’s your thing. Other than that, I’m not really the right person to ask to be honest with you. I’m far too much of a cynic.

I did see a clip that you did for Radio 1 last year of who to see at the Reading Festival, but you just flipped it around into the – œHow about we just tell you who not to see’… which was a pretty long list. (Click here for the clip.)
Yeah, well, there was some pretty fruity hair that was going on back then. I saw that clip, but I was just too distracted by the hair cut disaster that was going on, which probably says more about me than anyone else.

I saw that you had described your first official Cardiff gig as Future of the Left as – œthe worst show ever’. So if that was the worst, what’s been the best?
Well, the last Australian tour, all of the shows were pretty good – but we particularly enjoyed the one in Sydney last time, at the Annandale. The crowd were just incredible. I think for some reason, as a band, we just go down really well in Australia. And we also go down well in particular cities in the US; we go down well in Chicago and New York, but particularly in Seattle.

We supported Against Me! last year in October in the States, and the reaction in Seattle was great. Even though there were lots of people at the back giving us the finger (which is something we actively get off on), there were several hundred people just standing in the middle of the floor just kicking the shit out of each other in the nicest, most polite way possible.

But I think the best show we’ve ever actually played as a band was in Liverpool about two and a half years ago to about seven people, but that’s always the way it goes, my friend. The mad performances are witnessed by next to nobody, but the slabs of mediocrity are delivered to huge, huge teeming crowds.

On your live album, you have quite a pop at Reverend and the Makers when a technical hitch interrupts the performance. Have you made friends and invited them round for tea and scones?
No, they won’t be coming round for tea and scones. We happened to have done a festival with them a few days before, and I’d never actually heard their music before, but I was struck by how shit they were. And they ended up having a bit of a head to head with our friends, Fighting With Wire, accusing them of nicking stuff from their dressing room.

I mean, our friends were Northern Irish so they immediately look like the most suspicious nutters of the backstage crew. And you know, then stuff broke [on the live album], we didn’t plan on stuff breaking and I needed something to talk about. Lo and behold, an easy target presented itself to my brain and I just talked and talked and talked.

One day the singer guy [Jon McClure] is bound to kick my head in. I mean he’s about 6’9” and his face is about as big as most people’s torso, he could probably nose-butt me into a coma.

What’s next for Future of the Left?
Just touring for the rest of this year, and then hopefully getting back into the writing cycle quicker than we did last time. I mean, we tried this time, but it just took about six or seven months to effectively shed the skin of the previous album and get this one moving.

But the thing with the writing is that it happens when it happens. The next record could be in two years time or it could be three years time, so it’s whenever it’s self evidently good. It’s certainly not just gonna fit into some schedule that a record company or agency think they need for the purposes of marketing the band in terms of its momentum, it’ll be just when it feels right. We are such a bunch of bastards to work with, it must be awful.

Ah, well at least it keeps it interesting for the label…
Yes, let’s just say that!

Thanks for your time Andy.
Thank you; maybe see you at the Annandale at the turn of the year!

Travels With Myself and Another is out now on 4AD/Remote Control Records. Read the FasterLouder review. Check out Future Of The Left’s hilarious – œWho Not To See At Reading Festival’ guide below.