The World Is Still Here and So Are We marks mclusky’s return in Falkous’s words

Transmission 191: Interview with mclusky

Mclusky, the Cardiff noise-rock group led by Andrew Falkous, return with The World Is Still Here and So Are We, their first album in twenty years, out now via Ipecac Recordings. The record follows a run of pre-release singles including “Chekhov’s Guns,” “People Person,” and “Way of the Exploding Dickhead,” each accompanied by videos directed by Remy Lamont.

Title: The World Is Still Here and So Are We
Artist: McLusky
Genres: Alternative Rock, Experimental Music, Noise Rock
Label: Ipecac Recordings
Description: Andrew Falkous discusses mclusky’s new album The World Is Still Here and So Are We and reflects on the band’s evolution since their return.

Formed in the late 1990s, mclusky originally disbanded in 2005 after three albums. Reuniting in 2019, the band’s current lineup—Falkous, Damien Sayell, and Jack Egglestone—picks up where they left off: sharp, confrontational, and often absurd. The new album is available on CD, digital, and a range of limited vinyl editions. A European and Australian tour follows through 2025.

Featured image: © Damien Sayell

What was the first piece of music or noise that made you want to pick up an instrument and do it yourself?

That’s a good question. I’m not sure I can remember. When I was a child, I loved comedy rap records. My parents were both music teachers, and I was made to play the violin. I did a thing called the Suzuki method, which is learning by ear—no sight reading or anything.

I can see how that gave me the tools I’ve used in my later—well, the word career seems like an exaggeration—but certainly in my musical life. But I wasn’t really interested in music as much when I was a kid. I was more interested in sport. I just wanted to play sport. I loved football. I loved cricket. But I wasn’t good enough at those things. Music is something I came to accidentally.

I remember when I was about 13, my brother was into house music before then, but I remember hearing the Queen album Sheer Heart Attack and absolutely loving it. Also, as a small child, loving the Queen song One Vision from the Highlander soundtrack, which—considering the music I like nowadays—if I just heard that song fresh, I’d probably think it was ridiculous. But at the time, I think there’s something, particularly in adolescent males, where when you hear a big distorted guitar chord, you go, “Oh yeah.”

From quite early on, I really liked music, but I didn’t love a lot of music. I knew that I wanted to create my own. With other things—comedy, film, books—I aspire to do those, but I’m very much a fan, first and foremost. With music, I’m not a fan. I like what I do, which sounds horrendous. It’s awful. It’s a very arrogant answer. I do apologise.

What was the atmosphere like in Cardiff when mclusky started?

For the most part, we were ignored. In Cardiff, we didn’t fit in. We weren’t a heavy metal band. We weren’t an indie band. A lot of very middle-of-the-road indie music was popular at the time. So we were a bit of an anomaly. We couldn’t really be booked onto either kind of show.

As the band left Cardiff, we encountered the same thing. It wasn’t really a place for us. That’s a strong thing when you’re talking about art or identity, but it’s a weak factor when you’re talking about reaching a wider audience. There was nobody to play with.

mclusky, apart from our last ever show supporting Shellac at London’s Scala, never supported anybody over the course of the band. Not on tours or anything. We were always the headline band. Cardiff was a strange place.

In the late ’90s and early 2000s, there was a general sense of possibility—that you could do things there—which it doesn’t seem to have anymore. I live in Bristol now, just over the Severn Bridge. Bristol has that sense of possibility now—whether it’s real or just a device to keep people coming, who knows. Capitalism is difficult to parse.

I still love Cardiff. I still kind of wish I lived there. It’s a very—certainly in the centre—a very pretty city. But I’m not Welsh myself. I’m not from Wales. I moved there to go to university when I was 17, to do a degree in journalism.

I do and I don’t miss the melancholy of the Welsh people. They’re comfortable with defeat. They’re less arrogant than the English, certainly.

What were the hardest things about getting the band off the ground back then?

Just meeting the general indifference. There wasn’t much appetite for the band. It’s a lot easier doing a band when you’re younger. You don’t have family. Time stretches out forever.

On a practical level, it was easy to rehearse, easy to write. Early on in the band—even though the different characters were, well, crazy people—we worked very well together. It was only when we started to tour, when there was a degree of what you might call success, that things got difficult.

Early on, it was great. But we were genuinely outsiders—not like a cool guy in sunglasses is an outsider—but actual outsiders. I was a chubby guy. John, the bass player, red hair, quite awkward. Matt, the drummer, maybe a bit less awkward. But we were genuinely outsiders. We looked odd. We didn’t look like a band.

It wasn’t easy to take a photograph of us and say, “These guys look cool.” So much of the way rock music is sold—and by sold I mean not just explicitly sold, but psychologically sold—is about this idea of a gang that people want to be part of. Especially teenagers.

And I don’t think we looked like a gang you’d want to be part of. We looked like odd people. Now, with different members in the band, we look more comfortable in our own skin. When we go on stage now, that’s our fucking stage. Before, we used to shuffle onto stage like, “Oh my God, people invited us to be on stage. That’s so crazy.”

It was tough to get the band off the ground back then. One big difference now is that there seems to be an appetite for our music. Back then, there wasn’t any appetite or desire.

How did working with Steve Albini start, and what did you take from that experience?

It started because we signed to Too Pure, which at the time—I think now it’s just an archive label—but at the time was part of Beggars Banquet. They contacted him to see if we could record. I’m not really a rock historian, so I knew who Steve Albini was, but I wasn’t particularly familiar with the music he’d made. I’d probably heard a couple of Big Black songs. I knew he’d recorded Nirvana, Pixies, and I guess PJ Harvey, but I wasn’t a completist. I didn’t know about the way he worked.

That’s how it came about. It wasn’t our initiative. For me, it just showed that the label was taking us seriously. Working with him was a profound experience. It was fantastic. It was intense, but also laid back in the ways it had to be.

As much as people talk about Steve in terms of microphone placement and analogue vision, so much of making music—or art in general—is about creating the right atmosphere. When you’ve got the microphones set up properly, you’re capturing everything. The next stage is making sure the band gives a good performance—a vital performance.

I’m not sure if he deliberately used human psychology to get everyone in the right place, or if we were just excited about our band and our songs the first time we recorded with him. Maybe that took care of it. But it was a lovely time. One of the best times of my life.

When we recorded—this would have been 2001—I was 26. Up until that point, I’d never really felt useful. I’d never felt like I had a place in the world. I always felt out of step. But during that time—whatever it was, 10 or 12 days—I really felt like I was good at something. I felt like I was at the centre of something somewhat important. It was a very nice time. To say I look back on it fondly would be very true.

What was the earliest track written for The World is Still Here and So Are We? Did it set the tone for the rest?

There were a few songs that didn’t make the record. As I’m talking to you, I’m going to get up the track listing so I can remember. Yeah, because The World is Still Here track listing… let’s see, because I can’t remember off the top of my head.

Okay, the earliest song on the album, the one written first, is probably The Battle of Los Angelsea, which is a song that Damien sings, or the digger you deep, which aren’t very typical songs for us. They didn’t set the tone for the album. Even though I really like those songs, they’re not album-defining. They just sit there a little bit.

What happens with a lot of albums I’ve written—and I’ve been lucky enough to write quite a few—is that one or two songs come in and break the back of the album. They take the pressure away. That’s how it used to be. Whereas now, I like to embrace the pressure. Life gets more complicated and hard as you get older. You’ve got different obligations, bills to pay.

The pressure of writing a new album is a good pressure. There’s a silly quote from a footballer who used to play for the team I support—he said, “Pressure is for tyres.” That’s a silly way of looking at it, but pressure means you’ve done something important, and you’ve got a chance to do more.

So I actively look to put myself in pressure when it comes to songwriting. I don’t like pressure in family situations, but with songwriting, yes.

I think this album started to come together when we wrote Unpopular Parts of a Pig and People Person. When we eventually finished People Person—because that’s the song that gave me tinnitus. We were playing it in rehearsal, couldn’t quite get it, played it for about two hours, just going between the verse and the chorus. The next day I woke up and my ears were just in pieces. It was horrendous.

Is there a central theme across the album?

Not deliberately, no. There never has been with any of the albums. What’s interesting is that sometimes, by talking about the album afterwards—for example, I did an interview with a French journalist a couple of weeks ago—it was only after answering his questions that I realised some of the songs weren’t just exercises in language. They were about things.

Writing happens on a subconscious level. I don’t work very well if I say to myself, “I’m going to write a song about X.” It’ll always be a bad song. Same if I say, “I’m going to write a single,” or, “I’m going to write a poppy song.” It never works. “I’m going to write a heavy song.” You never get it right.

You’ve just got to be in the room, start playing, start singing, and something will happen. That’s how it works. You need to trust in the process. Doesn’t mean everything will be good. You still have to take it away, listen, figure out what’s good and what’s bad. But if you’re always working—and I am—you’re always thinking about music or writing.

You do a lot of work, even when you’re not in front of your easel or your guitar or piece of paper. You’re always ruminating. Words, situations, come in and out of your head. It’s your whole life. Your whole life goes into it.

Were there any non-musical influences, like books, films, political events that filtered into the writing of this album?

All of those things—whether it’s Gaza, books I’ve been reading, comedy I love—they come through subconsciously. You’ll find artefacts of them on the page or in the song, and you didn’t realise you wanted to do that. But you’re always influenced by things, as a person.

I love comedy. I love laughing. But as a band, we’re not Bloodhound Gang or something. It’s not hilarious jokes. The humour should come across as part of a person’s personality, like it does with a friend of yours, rather than, “Here’s a big joke—everybody laugh.” That’s not the atmosphere or the intended context.

I can’t think of any one thing in particular. I do read a lot, but I can’t say that I’ve manifested a particular book. I did really enjoy The Fraud by Zadie Smith last year. That was my favourite book that I read. But that’s historical fiction based around a true event in 19th-century Britain. I’d struggle to see how that made its way into the music.

Some of the silly puns or jokes—like the titles Chekhov’s Guns—I think this might be the only rock album with two references to Russian literature in the song titles. That’s incredibly pretentious, but those song titles are meant to be funny.

Kafka-esque Novelist Franz Kafka—that’s because there was definitely a stage in my life where I’d read about art or whatever and everything was described as Kafkaesque. So for me, the ultimate joke is to describe Franz Kafka as Kafkaesque. You have to admit, Franz Kafka is rather Kafkaesque.

How did the collaboration with Ipecac start?

Marc, who runs Ipecac, contacted me after we released a small EP in 2023 to raise money for US tour visas. We arranged everything ourselves, in conjunction with a wonderful agent we have there. Mark contacted me to say he liked the recording and asked if we could meet when we were in Brooklyn. That’s what happened.

We had a few enquiries from other labels, but nothing concrete. It just felt right.

I knew about Ipecac. I had one or two of their releases in my—not huge—collection. I’m not a fan of any label, but the experience of working with them has been incredible. I’d highly recommend it.

I don’t want to gush yet—let’s get the album out, see how it all goes. But so far, it’s been wonderful. Although maybe I’m not allowed to say that about Ipecac. Maybe they prefer to seem dark and mysterious. So maybe I’m supposed to say the experience has been terrible. I’ve been haunted by visions ever since we signed.

After this record, what’s next? More writing, touring, or something else?

Whatever occurs. We’re not as young as we once were. We want to do records, but more importantly, we want to live in the moment as much as possible. We want to enjoy everything we do without the pressure of it having to lead to something else.

You don’t play a show in Paris expecting that if it goes well, the next time you’ll play a bigger show. When you’re playing the show, you’re in the show. You don’t think about anything else. No other dreams or expectations—just what’s in front of you.

Later in the year, we’ll be doing about 20 shows in the EU, which is incredible. I haven’t toured extensively in Europe since 2016. That’s nine years ago. My daughter’s been born since then. Now she has a fully fledged personality. She’s built more Lego than anyone can count. She also supports the same terrible football team as me.

We’d love to do another couple of records, but first we’ve got to get this one done. Then we can get excited about that.

Photos courtesy of mclusky

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others