ALBUM REVIEWS |
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The Fall ‘Fall Heads Roll’ (Slogan) |
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| The Fall. Two words guaranteed to polarise the vast majority of music fans. On the one side you've got all the people (50,000 if a recent Fall album title is anything to go by) who rate Mark E Smith and his wandering and variable band of post-punk noiseniks above all others. And then there are those who just don't GET The Fall. For the sake of this review, FUCK ALL THOSE PEOPLE. Because, you see, The Fall are perhaps the last truly great English band. With technology and the media being what they are, it is no longer possible to be as defiantly anti-cool as The Fall. (You want anti-cool these days? You've got Franz Ferdinand. Now go put Franz Ferdinand alongside The Fall. See what I mean?) The Fall stand alone. There's never been a band like em - and there WILL never be a band like 'em. Which isn't to say that every single thing they produce is terrific. You get great albums. You get bum albums. You get ups and you get downs. The Fall can have bad decades. But even on bad records, you get great stray tunes (think: ‘Two Librans’; think: ‘The Book of Lies’; think: ‘Idiot Joy Showland’). Odd glimpses of the genius Mark E Smith and the random assortment of backing type chaps and chappesses conjure up from time to time. He is - as anybody who has ever witnessed The Fall live will tell you - a curmudgeonly fucker. Sometimes The Fall are in fashion. Sometimes they are out of fashion. Sometimes it is their own fault. Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes you think: I will never buy another Fall album again. Sometimes it is as if no other band will do. They are a seething bag of contradictions - and that is but a small part of what makes them so goddamn great. And now fashion, circumstance, Mark E Smith's volatile temperament - whatever it is - has come round again - and The Fall are back in vogue. A documentary on BBC3, renewed interest following the death of John Peel and even ‘Perverted by Language’, a book of short stories inspired by the band featuring contributions from the likes of Michel Faber, Mick Jackson, Stewart Lee and Steve Aylett among others set to be published in 2006, have all helped to focus attention on the band - and the focus has helped The Fall produce their most potent collection of songs for a good long time. Some of these songs - 'What About Us', 'Blindness' and 'Clasp Hands' - will be familiar, if you shelled out on the inestimable Peel / Fall boxset released earlier this year - but, perhaps for the first time, the versions that are on the album are about a hundred times better than the Peel versions, particularly as far as 'Clasp Hands' is concerned (here, it's one of the best songs The Fall have ever done - it's THAT good). But there are a dozen or so other treats here too. Single 'I Can Hear The Grass Grow' you probably know - 2 minutes and 49 seconds of scratchy garage punk. But there's also 'Pacifying Joint' - which kicks off like 'Deadbeat Descendent' and rocks like the proverbial bastard. 'Midnight Aspen' (and the subsequent 'Aspen Reprise') sound gentle (can you imagine a gentle Fall? ... here it is), like much of, say, Jim O'Rourke's solo output. 'Assume', 'Bo D' and 'Ya Wanner' are all killer Fall tracks: fat riffs, tremendous vocals, acid surreal lyrics. But what is most surprising in an album chock-full of surprises is just how The Fall continue to evolve, even at this late date: 'Early Days of Channel Fuehrer' sounds plaintive (like 'Bill is Dead') while 'Breaking The Rules' sounds - gasp - personal. All told, this is a blinder. If yr a fan, this is the best Fall album since ‘The Frenz Experiment’, which means better than ‘Extricate’, better than ‘I Am Kurious Oranj’, better than ‘The Infotainment Scan’. But more than that, this is just a great rock'n'roll rekkud. It's as essential as they come. If you're a Fall fan, you will by now be nodding your head and saying Fuck me! When and where can I get hold of a copy of this baby?!? And if you're not a Fall fan - Fool! What the fuck is wrong wit choo?! words: Pete Wild |
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