BORN TO HANG AND PROUD OF IT

McLusky “That Man Will Not Hang”

The clever thing about McLusky is that they knew how to express anger, bile, cynicism, and bitterness in vivid and visceral ways, but also knew how to make that genuine feeling also come off as dumb and funny. The best McLusky songs allow you to connect with the guy who is in a sputtering rage on a cathartic level, but also someone pointing and laughing at that guy on an intellectual level. As great and wonderfully specific as Andy Falkous’ lyrics could be, it’s sorta like he was singing in an entire language made up of different inflections of “fuck you.”

“That Man Will Not Hang” is the platonic ideal of a McLusky song – a pummeling bass line, a vicious vocal, and a heavy final sequence that intensifies an already intense song. Falkous starts the song off with a fanciful image – “there’s a story on a thimble on a dimple on a pea” – and proceeds from there to paint a portrait of some pathetic asshole whose greatest crime seems to be that he “introduced me to the joys of doubt” and “gave away his heart like it was his to give away.” Falkous sings about this guy in a way that makes you want to hate him too, but if you listen a bit closer, he seems more like a dumb chump who’s been taken for a ride.

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