Week 12: 13/05/85 - 01/02/86

And we're off into week 12 and a more sedate 3 hours of The Fall. The Wonderful and Nations albums were box-setted recently and so there's a bumper lot of outtakes and weirdo material from those records to plough through: "Demo Suzuki" an almost indistiguishable from the album version of Damo Suzuki. The outtake craze seems to have died out somewhat since the introduction of CDs in the 90s - but these outtakes are diverting rather than interesting. There's a demo-y version of Paintwork, with a heavy jangle guitar but that's about it in the truly interesting stakes.

And two versions of Ma Riley - the Marc baiting track. SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO NEW FACE IN HELL! It's a tune even though it's hard to tell if Mark's being nice or nasty.

Couldn't Get Ahead is old school rockabilly Fall - Brix sneers, the guitars are "angular". It's probably about old men in pubs but Rollin' Dany I never really liked. It feels like they're pissing about too much. There's a unique track called Edie which is largely instrumental I think.

And then we get to the album proper. I love both Wonderful and Nation a great deal but there's just something more together about Nation. I love the title and the cover is fantastic. Two tracks bookend it: Mansion / To Nkroachment: Yarbles - the latter having lyrics but being essentially the same song. I remember a teenage me trying to decipher each word in the latter's title. Listening to it in isolation is a failure - it works as a whole. Bombast has a stupid spoken intro but is a solid tune. What You Need has this reggae type guitar and great lyrics: What You Need? An Oven Mitt!. Get Up! Make A Buck! I've never been to L.A. but I'm sure that the song captures it in all it's glory. The closing three are wondrous, My New House is stupid Mark: Have you seen my new house?. It's probably about yuppies or something like that. Paintwork is the winner on the LP, all clips and weirdness before the repetition kicks in and the TV excerpt goes over the top of it. Then the Can tribute - I like how he starts with Paper Bag and Vitamin C and then quickly gives up on name checking Can songs.

The Peel session that follows is okay. They do Faust Banana which was to become Dktr Faustus, a hint of the next LP. Cruisers Creek was probably a better live song than it is on record. To top it all off - the best version of Lucifer over Lancashire from the Backdrop CD - everything you want from that song, blazing guitar and Mark shouting to be heard over the top. And week 12 is done.