POO -- The Fall

The new album is strange and inscrutable. Agreed they are really in some weird realm of...what kind of music is this? I'm not even sure anymore. Of course, in six months I'll be tapping my toe to it...

I repeat

COUPLES VS JOBLESS MID 30'S

It's quite metal that one

recently learned that "popcorn double feature" off of Extricate is, like Black Monk Theme, a cover……the writer Scott English did "brandy" and "Bend me shape me"… listening to earlier versions from the Searchers and someone named Tim Wilde was more or less psychedelic… like the title "popcorn double feature" as well as the lyrics seemed none more MES when I heard the tune first in 1995, but now they indeed seem a bit too linear and on the nose…but even given the tendency to like the first version you've heard of whatever it might be, the Fall's arrangement, particularly the intro (are those synth strings?) is much more dramatic and portentous…

I am going to one of the baby's alright shows…only saw him at Coney Island High in 1998, an indifferent show at which he had a shiner he got from whoever it was that struck back from the infamous Brownies show a few days prior…

pretty sure that was Karl Burns

I'm glad they've dropped the "one obscure cover per album" schtick tbh, but I love "Popcorn Double Feature"

Don't want to alarm people further but he was supposed to be appearing at a Wyndham Lewis thingummabob at the Imperial War Museum(!) in M/cr tonight but has withdrawn due to ill health.

The one and only time I ever saw this band live (in the mid '90s) was tense and confusing - I still haven't come close to watching any band that gave off such weird, intense vibes as that band did at that time.

I saw this gig w/Brix on the Middle Class Revolt tour:

Thursday, 22 September 1994 La Luna, Portland, Oregon

M5 / Behind the Counter / 15 Ways / Reckoning / Ladybird (Green Grass) / Mere Pseud Mag Ed / Free Range / Lost in Music / Bill Is Dead / Glam Racket / Hey! Student (Brix on vocals) / Surmount All Obstacles / Life Just Bounces / Deadbeat Descendent / L.A.

solid show, nothing transcendent iirc but S Hanley killed it on bass and Brix was ferocious

I've only seen them once. 2003 at the Roisin Dubh in Galway. They were touring the "Country on the click" album. Great gig even if I wasnt familiar with the album at that point. They did play "Spoilt Victorian Child" though and MES came on stage 5 minutes into the set with a big LIDL bag.

I had the chance to see them at Electric Picnic '09 but I had slept it out

Sleeve I saw the Seattle show of that tour. Had no idea brix had rejoined and flipped the fuck out when she walked onstage.

Also saw TNSG, Fall Heads Roll (more than once) and RPTLC tours. Wish to god I had clearer memories of the TNSG show at the Guthrie theatre in Minneapolis. I was only 15 and I knew the previous album but didn't have TNSG yet.

Unfortunately, Brix's second stint with The Fall was nowhere as good as her first stint... they really seemed to be unravelling spectacularly in the '90s. There's this whole period from Craig Scanlon getting sacked to the last stand of Karl Burns and Steve Hanley at Brownies - including the final farewell of Brix - which must serve as one of the worst periods in The Fall's history, if not the worst. These were people who were specracularly firing on all cylinders in 1985-1986 to awesome effect.

*spectacularly

so wrong

Cerebral Caustic is solid, Light User Syndrome is superb, Levitate is very good. I'll give you spottiness from late '98 until The Unutterable, but that's only a few years.

but hey, feel free to ignore this great music, your loss

I like The Frenz Experiment and I Am Kurious Oranj, and a few tracks from the early '90s, but I don't go back to that stuff as often as I do the stuff from the beginning up to 1986.

I find everything from Cerebral Caustic up to Levitate to be quite weak.

There's been some great stuff from The Unutterable onwards, and some not-so-great stuff, but I feel like all the Fall I really need is on their first 9 albums or so. 11 at a push, maybe.

Love the 2nd Brix run...Light User Syndrome has one of my favorite Fall songs "He Pep!" with an all time lyric from MES

"I believe there's a new drug out.
It's called speed I wrote a song about it
Conceptually a la Bowie.
But it's been lost in the bowels of the record company
By our manager
So instead our new 45 is 'Girlies' "

"I am Kurious Oranj" is superb

I saw this gig w/Brix on the Middle Class Revolt tour:

Thursday, 22 September 1994 La Luna, Portland, Oregon

M5 / Behind the Counter / 15 Ways / Reckoning / Ladybird (Green Grass) / Mere Pseud Mag Ed / Free Range / Lost in Music / Bill Is Dead / Glam Racket / Hey! Student (Brix on vocals) / Surmount All Obstacles / Life Just Bounces / Deadbeat Descendent / L.A.

solid show, nothing transcendent iirc but S Hanley killed it on bass and Brix was ferocious

― sleeve, Wednesday, 2 August 2017 18:08 (one hour ago) Permalink

I was at that show too! Your recollection is spot on.

For some reason I imprinted early on The Infotainment Scan and won't be budged. I've always been bemoaning that I've never been able to see them because the band gets sacked before getting to Los Angeles. Now, I doubt that I'll ever get a chance anywhere.

I am Kurious Oranj is one of my least favourite Fall albums but I am a weirdo who quite likes Are You Are Missing Winner so

My appreciation of The Infotainment Scan has grown and grown with each decade, now it's on my shortlist of fall faves and is my favorite example of 'Synth fall'

Infotainment Scam is great ("Lost in Music" seems an insane tune for the Fall, but hearing it it just makes complete sense). For a band with such a huge discog there are very, very few let downs for me. The Fall are the only band where even the records I don't dig make me feel it is my fault, not theirs, for I've not found the way in yet.

After admiring these guys for years I just bought a shit ton of Fall albums in sales. Kinda wading slowly into them, just kinda imagine that it'll take years to listen to and absorb everything, and I'm fine with that. (In the meantime? I'll just buy more Fall records.)

Best approach :)

yeah, just let it all sink in

In the last few years, The Fall have went from a band that I love but only go to when I'm in the "mood" to "why the fuck aren't I listening to The Fall right now?"

I like LBI's statement that it's my fault as a listener if there's a Fall LP I don't get it. Very John Peelesque

^^

In a way The Infotainment Scan is the last of their really pastoral records post-Brix. I think Code: Selfish is the best of those.

why are people grudgeful here?

how old are the stars, really?

http://www.anothermanmag.com/life-culture/9967/post-punk-legend-mark-e-smith-s-guide-to-longevity

“I’ve been poorly since Christmas, so I’ve been actually sitting down and watching bits of music on telly,” he reveals.

That's confirmation there's something seriously wrong, eight months where even he'd describe himself as ill and (reading between the lines) mainly housebound.

plenty to go through in thread since last posted with promise of posts on death and office culture, but just popping in to say i do like the line

“Homosapien, electric, selectin’ ya”

in fol de rol.

it’s the lyrical equivalent of those draughtsmen and women who can convey emotion and atmosphere with just a few pencil lines*. smith has always had the ability to imply entire worlds, corollaries and satiric or fantastic extensions of this one, in such lines.

Also:
We have no residents!
We have no reservation!
We have no pre-book!
I CRAVE DRAMA!
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII...
CRAVE DRAMA!
Victoria Train Station Massacre
We have no.... [vocal tape goes into reverse]

is rather wonderful as well.

*i’m thinking hogarth’s famous pikeman exiting a room, comprising three pencil strokes.

or wyndham lewis’ beautiful line portrait of his wife: http://pin.it/HEfxcQg (angry wyndham lewis so much of a bore compared to the artist (and writer in places) of beauty.

another one of my favourite examples of dread or drama flicked off in surreal collocations or collages of words being the opening line of Serum: “you can do what you want, Dear Barlow, as long as you got serum” before the song spirals into a feverish nightmare of endless recursion (“101-uh-POINT ONE”)” turning by the end into “101.101.101”.

The otherwise not particularly distinguished Taurig has the amusingly incomprehensible sinister dream whispering throughout over the thud-click of the electric backing, the only distinguishable line being the very first words - “He bought a watch...”

also Second House Now seems to be about an ambitious career ghost deciding to get a second home in the big city (“my image/mirage: black and white, apparition like!”)

All these names for woodlice sound like Fall songs:

http://conorhoughton.tumblr.com/post/35031117866/this-evening-the-twitter-celebrity-mooseallain

BANANA!

Names for Woodlice Sound should be the next Fall album.

Woodlice Sound
Get ovah!
Reputation surge, for skint taxon'y major

"Fol De Rol", "Brillo De Facto", "O! Zztrrk Man" (really compelling in that wtf-is-this way) and "Groundsboy" are my picks from the new album. Damned if I can understand most of the lyrics, though.

Fizzles should write a book on Fall lyrics. He always has an intriguing take

Fizzles can write a book on anything and I'm there with my wallet out

otm

irish. james murphy is their chief

His dreamgirl sings adverts for the Weetabix

Link?

"the war against intelligence"*

* “The phrase ‘pre-cog’ comes from having the ability to see into the future – pre-cognition. I’ve always felt this. Countless times I’ve written something or said something and it’s manifested in reality. I’m not talking standard coincidence. It’s more than that, something slightly more sinister . . .”

Kid passing by kitchen while I'm playing the Fall: "This music is bad."

Kid five minutes later: Dancing to "Cruiser's Creek."

I recently listened to all 57 CDs I own by The Fall, ask me anything

the October 1998 Peel Session is shockingly bad, a real nadir

The Unutterable and COTC were still great

"9 Out Of 10" is a great way to end a career

the October 1998 Peel Session is shockingly bad, a real nadir

#3, #4, #5 #6, #11, #12 and #19 are all candidates,

but it's #22 for me.

It came after the group had exploded in America, amidst uncertainty about both The Fall's future and the quality of what they would produce. The session that The Fall came up with - #22 - to announce their return was remarkable for this reason alone.

However, it was exceptional in other ways. It was incredibly raw sounding, as Peel said at the time it was like they had gone back to a Dragnet sound. Smith has never recorded sourer more rancorous vocals; the incredulous stuttering anger of Bound Soul, the impenetrable pained howling on Antidotes, the thin misanthropic nihilism of the Saints cover This Perfect Day, and the deranged Shake Off, the lyrics of which sound like they're being heard through a fever.

The black void behind the music is palpable, a feeling increased by the way Smith's pre and post tune instructions are left in - you are aware of the alchemy of The Fall, the something out of nothing, the something strange out of the perfectly ordinary. It's a dreadful, sinister, corruscating session and sounds utterly timeless so primitive is it.

It has the characteristics of the best Fall - sparse and dense at the same time, detailed but primal, mundane and magical - and it has them in

Not since early versions of The Hip Priest has music sounded less like music and more like invocation, incantation and exorcism - 'bad unafeared art'.

I remembering listening to it through headphones as it was broadcast - I still think that's the best way to listen to it - the hairs on the back of neck bristling with the febrile excitement that it invoked, terrifyingly reminded of the statement of intent from Fantastic Life -

Ours is not to look back, ours is to continue the craft.

― Abbe Black Tentacle (GamalielRatsey), Wednesday, 25 February 2009 13:20 (twelve years ago) bookmarkflaglink

you are extremely wrong

it is the worst thing I have ever heard them do by a wide margin