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....

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.

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.

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.

Week 29: 26/08/97 - 17/05/98

Hmmmm. A 2 hour week again - I have an internal rule that if the playlist is 2 hours I only listen to it once a day, if it's less then I do two. So I got in a lot of Kermode and Mayo and a small dose of the Fall. I start with a few odds and sods from Northern Attidude  - a bunch of randos on a random label. Nothing outstanding but a confirmation that Mr. Pharmacist is a staple live show thing now. This is a good thing.

Then Levitate. I have a lot of time for Levitate - I kind of agree with the bible in that it feels half baked sometimes but overall it's pretty strong. And it's one of the few Fall records which really gets that blend of hard electronics and their Rockabilly sound, and Mark's sounding great finally. I like Hurricane Edward, with it's Mr Hughes was right in retrospect intro.

AND THEN OMG! I'm A Mummy - surely one of their best songs of all time and possibly one of the great covers of all time. Taking that twee I'm a Mummy from Bob McFadden and For and turning it up to 11. The other half of Bob McFadden was born in Oakland and Bob was responsible for the Medium is the Massage LP - it's a total joy. Then Doc Shankley: If, like me, you are a complete and utter pranny you know what I mean when I say recipe. No idea what this is about but it's great. 4 1/2 Inch is effectively Inch (next week for that one) but is great. Jungle Rock is another good cover, not quite I'm A Mummy though. And they close out okayish Levitate, Everybody But Myself. It's a melting pot. There's some bonus tracks on the CD but these are pretty forgettable.

Masquerade single b-sides are okay but nothing outstanding. Then a Peel session with Touch Sensitive! And it sounds nothing like the resulting single: it just goes to show that adding a "Hey Hey Hey" really lifts a song.

This being the late 90s, there also has to be a vinyl version of "club" type remixes. And the Fall never disappoints. You want a "Mr. Natural" Funked up remix of Masquerade? You got it. It sounds like incidental music from the club scene in Spaced - like I can't ever imagine any kind of DJ actually playing this out and I can't imagine any Fall fan playing this regularly. I couldn't find this on CD so I shelled out for the 10". Not even coloured vinyl. Amateurs. On the Flip side things get serious: PWL Remix time. The album was recorded at PWL which might go some way to explain the super punchy sound they got on this one.

Remember that time that the Aphex Twin got asked to do remixes and he just claimed to always give them a tape of whatever was lying around at the time. Well the PWL mix sounds something like the Fatboy Slim approach to remixes: Let's change the speed and tweak the drums. Thus it's the most pointless remix ever. Any they adjusted the speed in the wrong way - it's slower than the original. NUTTER VAINS.

Week 28: 05/12/96 - 26/08/97

No pictures this week because they didn't actually release anything - just a humble 30 minutes of odds and sods. A forgettable version of Everybody but Myself. Mark announces "Das Vulture Ist Ein Nutter Wein", begins to count the band in and they just play at a random segment. Genius - and they sound angry too which is nice. There's a track called Interference. It's wibbly wobbly space noises for about 5 minutes. Ol Gang live is good and it's a good song. That is all. So much for that "work ethic".

Week 27: 16/03/96 - 05/12/96

I seemed to have missed this one somehow and what a one to miss. The Light User Syndrome. I never bought this one at the time, I don't remember it getting favourable reviews. And to be fair it's largely forgettable - quite heavy on decent but non magical Fall tracks. And a couple of heavy hitters too: Vulture and He Pep! are big tracks which were live favourites. Mark looks like Eddie Marsden on the cover though. There's a non Mark vocal on Stay Away which provides some respite but it just sounds weird. The Chisilers was good but much more appealing as a single than an album track. The problem with the album is that it sounds like the Fall on auto pilot.

Then The Fall! Live! At The Astoria! 26th June 1996. It's okay. A little wayward in places - they do a cracking version of LA with one of the band shouting over Brix's bits. And Mr. Pharmacist is now becoming a staple of the live sets, and with good reason.

Then The Fall! Live! At Various Festivals! Truly if you've heard one forgettable concert, you really have heard them all.

Then A Peel Session. I remember hearing this one, but not the music really. It sounds 200 times better than the versions on the things above which is sort of depressing. Brix totally channels mid 90s indie on Spinetrack, to a frightening degree. The reason I remember it: They do a Captain Beefheart cover. Beatle Bones of course. Mark does the intro bit in his own way and I thought that would be it but they do the whole thing. It's okay. Not nearly as good as their Monks covers but you can't win them all.