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.