There are a lot of bands out there that will never in a thousand years engender indifference—Creed, Tool, Acid Mothers Temple, Wolf Eyes. They present you with a stark choice—love me or start a blog about how much you hate me.
Into this extraordinarily mixed bag, I insert the recently (2004) disbanded Welsh pigfuck pranksters Mclusky.

Mid last year, I made a mix CD for a dear friend to mark her return to Melbourne from six months’ self-imposed exile in Brisbane. The “Chocolate Mix” as she calls it, consisted mainly of mellow, folky music from the likes of Destroyer and Sufjan Stevens. And right there in the middle was “To Hell With Good Intentions.” I don’t know what possessed me.

To this day, every time I promise Vida a mix CD, she calls me or emails me to plead “No Mclusky! Please!”

Clearly we are not dealing with common or garden dislike here. This is serious.

It honestly never occurred to me that Mclusky would be like this. Critics had raved about their 2001 album Do Dallas and over the two years following its release they had built up quite a following. I had yet to discover them when they played some demonic shows in Melbourne. I remember seeing photos in the street press of Andy Falkous with gaffer tape crosses over his nipples, howling into a microphone. My interest was stirred—I had to know what he was screaming.

The album is a short, fuzzed-out blast of punky noise. Fourteen years ago, it would have been called “grunge”—I don’t know what you call it now. The lyrics are profane (song titles like “Fuck This Band” and “Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues” give you a hint) and often nonsensical (“your mother is a ballpoint pen thief”).

In hindsight they were never going to be a mix CD staple the way Belle and Sebastian or Death Cab For Cutie can be. Even my most staunchly rockist friends were never going to embrace two-minute songs warning against fornicating in burning barns.
Maybe I was just testing the waters. It’s a commonly held belief that if someone is known to like a slightly extreme band, the probability of them liking an even more extreme band is greater than if they hadn’t expressed an opinion. Or P(A|B) > P(A) for the mathematically-minded. I might have subconsciously been paving the way for a mix of nothing but Japanese avant-garde noise terror—I don’t know.

So I present some tracks to you to sort you into the believers and the infidels. You’ll know which camp you fall into when you’re screaming “My love is bigger than your love…Sing it!”

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