Monday 25 August 2014

Week 33: 17/07/00 - 07/04/01

After no releases last week - this week was a 5 hour stampede. Mainly down to the ultimate US tour, where every date seems to have been officially released. But that's to come.

The Unutterable, which could have been forgettable but actually it's really really good. Cyber Insekt and Two Librans chug along and Mark's on good form. It's like a vintage Fall LP, a bit of weirdness, some tape stuff, and then a rockabilly Banger. In this case the banger is all about Mark hating roundabouts. Him and Me both - though here they call them Traffic Circles. Pumpkin Soup and Mashed Potatoes is a bit cheesy but that's forgivable really. And then the last track is a weird one - sung by not Mark but it's a straight up Fall cover version style rocker type affair. It's great.

It's now traditional to release a whole bunch of alternative versions of entire albums for the Fall. So there's a bundle of bonus tracks which don't really do much.

Then Rude All The Time (single). Totally weird - sounds like Mark was showing the Lo-Fiers how to do it. I Wake Up In The City is an absolute belter though, all treble fuzz and banging drums.

And then the live sets. The weird thing about the Bootleg Box Set is how indistinguishable each set is. It's pretty much the same set list on and on. Largely Unutterable stuff, with a few surprises thrown in. The band are on cracking form...for a while at least. There's a real stamina issue, with the energy levels trailing off over the course of each set. Mark is either in time with the band or totally off but generally it's pretty good. I'm not sure about the efficacy of releasing these type of shows though, there are times when some chump in the crowd is announcing the songs as they start, and he's louder than the band. It's all for the cause. Mark struggles with the words to F-Oldin Money which is not surprising.

Mr Pharmacist is now a staple of the live shows, and probably replaces Hip Priest as the singalong track. It's a great tune though and let's the band really attack it. The other song which is a totally weird revival is Paintwork - a weird song to do live and a weirder song to bring back from the dead. It's largely instrumental when they play it, which is unsurprising. The other two brought back from the dead is I am Damo Suzuki, and And Therein. Damo must be a fun one to play live.

I can't afford to be tired of the Live stuff though - there's more to come next week....

Monday 18 August 2014

Week 32: 27/10/99 - 17/07/00

This week the Fall released no records. I made up for this by listening to Beer podcasts, buying the back catalogue of the New York Rock n Roll Ensemble, and finding out that one of my favourite records of the year is on Shrimper of all labels. Maybe the joke's on me.

Monday 11 August 2014

Week 31: 05/02/99 - 27/10/99

I Know, I Know, I Know, I Know, I Know, I Know....Touch Sensitive kicks off The Marshall Suite and it's still the best thing they've done in ages. AND THEN. F-Oldin' Money which is one of the best covers they've ever done. There's something totally fresh in the music now, an urgency and the loss of the usual suspects has meant that whilst the Fall have lost their signature sound, Mark's starting to work out who to make it work.

Shake-Off is almost like the Fall of old but modernised - Mark's mumbling about stuff but it's not to a relentless rockabilly beat but to something more polished.

Not to say that the Marshall Suite is a winner, it's a little up and down for me - it's more solid than albums previous but there's still something lacking. Might be Mark's lost his confidence a little or that he's not worked out the band yet. Antidotes outstays it's welcome a little. And Birthday Song falls into the Edinburgh Man type melancholy a little too easily.

Rounding off Marhsall Suite are odds and sods - A live version of Jet Boy which is a cover but I hated it. And a whole bunch of single B-Sides.

And then an XFM live concert. The bible goes nuts over this and I really don't know why. The sound quality is weirdly terrible - it sounds fine, but it's like the mix is all wrong and Mark's on this permanent echo and sounds a little out of it - the band play through Touch Sensitive even though he's either forgotten the words or got them all in the wrong place. And either he's dicking about with the guitars or someone's not ready but it's a little reaching at times. 10 Houses of Eve sounds great but the mix makes the whole thing a little muddy. Ah well. There's a shocker coming next week I know.

Monday 4 August 2014

Week 30: 17/05/98 - 05/02/99

Approaching the Millennium and we find The Fall not necessarily in rude health. Health being the operative word here - Amy and I watched the BBC4 documentary this week. Mark was pretty hammered throughout that one, I think this was the time when it felt like he was out of control.  And I think this started to effect the music as well - it feels less coherent, less together than usual. And for the Fall that's probably saying something.

But the music - and we start with a Peel session which is barely together. Antidotes especially wallows in incomprehensibility. The band sound perky and eager but there's no gel there and Mark sounds like he's rambling on the spot,

And then a wondrous sneaky thing. Inch was ostensibly a Smith side project but the bible reveals it to be a off cut from Levitate. The Inch were meant to be producers of Levitate but were sacked. AND WHY - Inch sounds 100% better than anything on L (bar I'm a Mummy) and is miles above the version that appeared on the album. Heavy crunching guitars and bleepy bloopy keyboards. It's great.

And then the remarkable single: Touch Sensitive. Right back in the Rockabilly with added "hey Hey Hey!"'s. The lyrics seem to be about Mark being a grouchy old man. It's bloody brilliant and in the way that only The Fall could do it. They're totally back together in this one - pop song amaze balls. There's a dance mix of course which, again, sounds like a outtake from Spaced. The b-side is all over the place. But that A-side though. Genius.

It would have ended there but I decided to dip my foot into the Mark Smith solo project: The Post Nearly Man. It was quite expensive to get a CD copy, so I snagged it on Amazon of all places.

It's a hard thing to deal with - it's not really spoken word, and it's certainly not The Fall. It's kind of like three people reading some of Mark's scrawling with occasional musical interludes. It's part HP Lovecraft Cthlu type stuff and part Mark rambling. There's a little bit of the hotel skit that he did way back on the Luciani play.

First listen I thought it was bonkers but on fifth or sixth listen I think it might be the best thing he ever did - as an album, as a whole it's totally spellbinding. And in the way that Mark does, it sounds incomprehensible but utterly enrapturing at the same time. There's other people speaking throughout. At times it reminds me of the Stephen Jesse Bernstein record - something that exists, that is wonderful but you can't really explain why you like it so much. The Post Nearly Man is fantastic and impenetrable. I love it.

That cover though - why he sticks with Pascal Le Gras is beyond me, his work is generally like a child pissing about with MS Paint.