This Becomes Us - This Becomes Us

(Words by Burra, The Fresh Prince Of Porth)

This Becomes Us is the solo collaborative release from Future Of The Left (and not forgetting ex-Million Dead) bassist Julia Ruzicka. This debut contains ten tracks of absolute pure gold, featuring a different vocalist on each track, including Black Francis from The Pixies, among others. Opener "The Picture of Delorean Gray", is a cracking little number; a nice and fast-paced, hard-hitting, fuzzy, punky number that leads into the bouncy "Undervalue Love", which has a kind of dark pop vibe to it. 

The third track - and a possible favourite -  is "Big Hitter" (featuring the vocals of Billy Mason Wood), which has quite an At The Drive In sound to it, I'd say. Absolutely love this one. Not to go for the obvious and lazy review, but "Painter Man Is Coming" (featuring the vocals of Black Francis) has such a nice Pixies vibe to it. This is a lovely track, and is very reminiscent of some of Pixies' finest work at times. Another favourite from this release.

I would describe "At The End Of Everyday" as having a very early 2000's kind of sound; I'm thinking like that original emo/post hardcore sound that was starting to come out around then; Cursive, Rival Schools etc. vibe I'm getting - it is refreshing to hear, either way!

The short and sweet "Simple Too" leans towards a distorted-yet-arty punk type of sound, leading into "The Gift That Nobody Wants", which sounds very Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster-esque, "Songs In My Mind" is great, really like the vocals on this one, a catchy little punk number with some powerful female lead vocals from Chantal Lewis-Brown. "Sassessa" is cool; a more laid back number compared the rest of the bunch, yet still upbeat and driving. The album's closer "This Horse Needs Peace" is a well-placed last track to the record, and a subtle instrumental outro to the whole thing.

Overall though, This Becomes Us - despite having a different collaboration on each track - still does the wonderful thing of managing to sound like a fully flowing, coherent album and not just a compilation of songs. As solo projects go,  this is exceptionally well done!

Future Of The Left - The Plot Against Common Sense

Future Of The Left are one of those rare bands that my friends are into that I can also get into. I'm a stubborn fucking dickhead, so when someone tells me to listen to something, I usually don't. So, the fact that I love this album is nothing short of a total miracle, but the love comes in heaps, and for good reason. I initially gave the whole thing a chance on the strength of "Beneath The Waves An Ocean", which has a bass riff dirtier than a Tory politician rolling in a mud pit at Reading Festival.

The whole thing is a bizarre mix of indie-style rock wrenched into odd time signatures and filtered through a scuzzy lens. I guess it's kinda like feeding The Strokes into a meat grinder whilst listening to John Zorn's Naked City, or something like that. "Goals In Slow Motion" is one of my favourite songs here; and if not more straight-forward than a lot of the tracks (think REM meets Green Day, seeing as we are on the subject of ridiculous comparisons), it does however possess a bangin' chorus hook which more than makes up for it. Church.