What does it sound like?:
Their last two or three studio albums have found The Fall sounding like the received Hepworthian opinion insists they’ve always sounded. ‘Like a drunk tramp fighting a vending machine in a bus station’, or something. And for a long-time fan and staunch defender it’s been tough hearing MES gargle incomprehensibly over boring, repetitive music driven by the worst-sounding keyboards this side of a toddler on a Bontempi.
While by no means a classic, album number 31 is enough to restore your faith if, like me, your fandom has been wavering. Back comes vocal melody and lyrics you can actually hear, while on the music front, Poulou’s tragic keyboards are less prominent and the guitar work more creative than it has been since Imperial Wax Solvent in 2008. Ten-minute psych-epic Auto Chip 2014-1016 is the Blindness we’ve all been waiting for since, well, Blindness, and Fibre Book Troll bristles with aggression and anger. In fact, for twenty minutes or so, this album is as good as anything they’ve ever done, and finds The Fall in all their Beefheartian glory, with singer and band clicking in an unholy and irresistible cacophony, an inscrutable puzzle of music and lyrics. Only Quit iPhone, with its uncharacteristically prosaic title and a sentiment to match, really lets the side down.
I still maintain that the best thing for The Fall would be for Mark E Smith to get a divorce (I don’t really, I wish them all the happiness in the world), but in the meantime this’ll do.
What does it all *mean*?
That there’s plenty of life in the old dog yet.
Goes well with…
Cautious optimism.
Release Date:
Might suit people who like…
The Fall, and bands influenced by The Fall.
Kaisfatdad says
“Beefheartian glory”. That captures the spirit of The Fall rather well.
Poppy Succeeds says
Thank you, sweetie. I see The Fall to Beefheart like Pj Harvey to Patti Smith — acolytes I prefer to the antecedents (good as the antecedents are).
Sewer Robot says
Acolytes you prefer to antecedents. Sounds like a thread idea..
Uncle Wheaty says
Your first paragraph sums up my view of them nicely.
Poppy Succeeds says
Oh, you!
Tiggerlion says
Considering I enjoyed two of their last three, I should like this one very much.
retropath2 says
I have never knowingly listened to the Fall. Nor, despite the temptaions dangled, Public Service Broadcasting. But they both play live for me at the Lunar Festival next month, (well, June, pedants) so am going to keep my ears unsullied
Junior Wells says
I do find it helps to be a bit hammered at a Fall gig.
Getthenet says
Yes Uncle Wheaty, I remember reading your “Are The Fall the worst band in the world” thread ( or something like that ). I then looked at your previous thread extoling the virtues of…..Cheap Trick. Oh well, we’ve all got different tastes.
Tiggerlion says
Vote Liberal. 🙂
Moose the Mooche says
Do you mean Lib Dem? Or The Liberal Party?
Don’t laugh. They’ll be standing somewhere. The SDP are standing in East Hull.
I’m not joking!
Douglas says
There’s not many albums where you could reasonably guess the band by the title alone, but The Fall are a noble exception!
Remember this? http://asburyandasbury.typepad.com/blog/2009/02/dodge-or-fall.html
The Good Doctor says
Sounds encouraging, I’m with you on recent LPs, and have also heard enough of that parping synth. I sometimes wonder if the last few years are MES’s attempt to show critics what happens when he *doesn’t* change the line-up.