kicker! kicker conspiracy!
Up today: “Fall Sound,” the first single from the Fall‘s forthcoming Reformation, Post TLC. I have to cop to not being a big fan of Fall Heads Roll; I loved Real New Fall LP, but Heads Roll felt like it took forever to ignite. The songs were strangely sluggish and soggy, suspiciously pro forma.
Reformation sets all that aright — it’s big and loud and is also maybe the angriest Fall LP to date (which is saying something). It’s hard not to read the songs as a kiss-off to the last iteration of the Fall. Depending on who you believe, the group either walked out or was sacked by Smith. “Fall Sound” is a gritty, growled put-down, Smith’s ruined voice announcing: “I’ve seen P.O.W.s less hysterical than you.” The group’s new lineup is comprised almost entirely of the LA band Darker My Love, who Smith charitably described in a recent MOJO interview as “much better than that last lot.”
Besides the acerbic lyrics, what strikes me most is how much the song sounds like Warsaw-era Joy Division. That grizzled, three-note bassline, the razor-wire guitar, the hi-hat heavy doomy dance-rhythms. It’s the first time The Fall are, to my ears anyway, identifiable as a Manchester band. Their return, as always, is right on time.
Yesterday seems to have been Fall day. I was listening to Live At The Witch Trials for the first time in about three years then I went to meet a group of friends at the pub after work and two of them had bought Fall albums, independently of one another.
To me they’ve always been a Manchester band. Their dourness fits with the city well. Manchester may have had millions of urban regeneration money poured into it, but it still rains all the time. I don’t think anywhere other than a northern English city could have produced Mark E Smith either. There’s a certain type of ‘speak as I find’ grumpy, sharp-witted northern bloke and Mr Smith is a classic of the genre.
i defer to you, since your familiarity with Manchester far outstrips mine; also: i wonder if, periodically, stars align and pockets of people all over the world decide they want to listen to the fall.
Astrology-ah!
I’ve heard the stream of “Fall Sounds” at the Narnack site and the YouTube for “Scenario” – yes, MES sounds inspired. Heads Roll most definitely seemed to be a bored/tired/lazy MES offering. On “Scenario”, I love how he is so pissed off about a parade.
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