Public Servant Lifestyle

It’s now over a year since the release of the critically acclaimed Fall Heads Roll and with a new line-up now in place, Fall aficionados everywhere have been looking forward, with a degree of impatience, to the next album. Well now that waiting is over and Reformation Post TLC - for that is the title of The Fall’s (26th!) new studio album - is a bit of a corker.

Pictured (right - and below): Mark E. Smith, The Fall’s main man. Photo credit: Kevin Cummins.

There aren’t very many bands that have been together longer than The Fall and, with a few exceptions, it’s difficult to think of any who, like The Fall, have released brand new material every year. Formed at the height of the punk rock movement in Manchester in 1976, The Fall has so far released around 50 singles, 25 studio albums and perhaps 50 live and compilation albums.

'The Grumpiest Man in Pop’

Famously the band has gone through numerous personnel changes over the years - there have been over 30 different line-ups so far. Last year witnessed yet another new line-up emerging but whatever personnel changes ensue always present is the enigmatic Mr Mark E. Smith (MES). Musical genius? Obnoxious drunk? Salford’s finest poet? A journalist’s worst nightmare? Working class hero? He's been called all of these - and was famously also dubbed ‘The Grumpiest Man in Pop’, by the NME. But whatever we think of the man behind the music one thing cannot be denied: Mark E. Smith has been carving his own distinctive - some would say jaundiced - signature on the music scene for the past twenty plus years. That music is as diverse, as interesting and as reaction provoking as anything else you are likely to put near your CD player. Sometimes accessible, sometimes anything but The Fall always deliver.

This is fourteen new tracks all wrapped up in a stained glass window style sleeve: one cover and thirteen originals written by Smith - with or without various members of the band's current line up.

Track 1 - Over! Over!: "I think it's over now I think it's ended" intones Smith - while burbling in his own languid style about seven year cycles. Gentle beginning to an album that starts gently in itself then tempo picks up towards the end.

Track 2 - Reformation! Driving rhythms - the title track - in as much as Smith spells out 'Reformation - Post TLC'. Seven minutes and 23 seconds of the kind of stunning backing that will have any Fall fan wishing it was twice as long - with a familiar lazy-seeming/improvised -seeming lyric that will be familiar and yet all new at the same time.

Track 3 continues to plough the same musical territory (even down to the same sort of rhythm track backing the whole thing) but this we can forgive - as it's such a good, very Fall-ish track.

Track 4 - White Line Fever - been a while since a cover version appeared on a Fall LP (the obscure I'm Going To Spain - from The Infotainment Scan?), but here it is, Merle Haggard's White Line Fever gets the MES remodelling treatment. For fans of Fall cover versions this is great news and easily ranks up there with the group's appropriation of The Kinks' Victoria or Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch's The Legend of Xanadu.

Could this be the best Fall cover version since they elevated the Big Bopper's White Lightning from its '50's origins back in 1990? You alone can decide - but we think it's getting there..."Let's do it all over again shouts one of the band midway through - after a fairly straight cover approach - and the track starts up all over again as track 5 - Insult Song: the kind of sprawling, free-form experiment that Fall fans will have come to expect - if not to know and love. The Lancashire town of Ramsbottom also gets a name check here as well. Which is always nice.

This then blends seamlessly into track 6 - My Door Is Never. "My door will never be open to you" croons Mr Smith - it's unclear who he's referring to, but it's a splendid.

Track 7& 8 - Coach and Horse/The Usher: A pair of rather short in between-ers for The Fall - a band for whom the concept of 'filler' material both on record and on stage is either totally alien or a major part of their way of life - depending on which side of the 'Mark E. Smith is a genius I could listen to his inspired invention all day long neat counterpoint (both being under two minutes in length) to the epic Das Boat - to follow later on.

Track 9 - The Wright Stuff

Track 10 - Scenario

Track 11 - Das Boat

Next comes track 11, the epic (ten minutes plus) Das Boat. Instrumental for the first few minutes of a very extended intro. Voices added to the mix - almost as extra instruments, or an afterthought - wander across the track sounding vaguely tribal - like a group of football fans half-heartedly entertaining themselves on the night bus home - or a chant carried on in poor order by a roughly synchronised infant’s class. Strangely hypnotic and seemingly lacking in a vocal from Mark E. Smith altogether.

As with second number Reformation! this ten-plus minutes this is the sort of Fall track that makes you wonder if all Fall tracks should be made to last ten minutes as a minimum - it seems such an optimum length. It's certainly one you can tell will go hopelessly over-length played live. I look forward to that! Speaking of playing live The Fall will undertake a UK tour during March and April.

Track 12 - Bad Stuff

Track 13 - Systematic Abuse

The dates and venues look like this:

"(With) minimal bass-heavy riffs...For newcomers to Smith's wonderful and frightening world it's a good introduction." - Uncut magazine.

"Recording in what is clearly a fluid and spontaneous environment, Smith sounds revitalised, delivering his most emphatic vocals in years." - Q magazine.

See also on Lifestyle:

The Return of Citizen Smith - Ladies and gents, it’s this year’s real new Fall album: Fall Heads Roll.

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