The Fall...#29

I've got a review of the new Fall album up at Blurt now. It's not as good as the last couple, but still worth a listen...that's the gist of my opinion. Actually, I really liked Douglas Wolk's review of the same album in PFK yesterday and wonder if I'm one of those people who's been blinded by Smith's persona. Our main difference is that I really liked the instrumental backing and Wolk thought it was weak. But anyway, here's a bit from mine:

"Ersatz G.B. finds him in fine and vicious form, savaging Snow Patrol and laptop users and British folk singers with geriatric venom. His band, the same since Your Future Our Clutter, locks in behind him, furnishing the hard-hammered foundation, the funk-punk-robot rigor, that give his rantings scale and drama and a weird euphoric edge. Consider, for instance, how "Mask Search" bounces bodily on an elastic bass line, how its guitar twitches with ecstatic tension, how the whole thing shimmies and pulses with sensual life, and how Smith hems and haws above it all, muttering about encaustic and lime. Or, the bizarre, metal-crunching "Greenway" how Smith's gargling, ravaged voice rises above the mayhem to inject some existential uncertainty. ("Channel hopping the other day through Danish Rock TV, I noticed a video where the person had a remarkable, coincidental resemblance to myself, to the video I was in recently," he recounts, entirely discounting the possibility that it was him.) The band's discipline, its blocked out musical precision, contrasts powerfully with Smith's visionary wanderings. Neither would work nearly as well by itself."

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And here's Wolk's take.

There was also a rather good profile of Smith and the Fall in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago.

Okay, that was interesting…

I’ve been stressing all week about the possibility of a Fall interview, which really looked like it wasn’t going to happen and then early this week, suddenly, like it was. What I’d asked for was Mark E. Smith, because …well, obviously, he is the Fall and everybody else is secondary. So it was kind of a shock when I picked up the phone today just after 11:30 and it was his wife Eleni, ready to do the interview. You can imagine, my whole list of questions was written for him, and none of them really worked for her. If I’d had time to think about it maybe some “What’s it like to be married to Mark E. Smith?” type questions would have popped up…you know, really getting into what he likes for dinner and whether he lets her have a crack at the crossword first…But as it happened, I muddled through a couple of questions, got some very bland and inoffensive answers and gave up.

So anyway, not as surreal as some Fall interviewing experiences, but strange enough.

I did have a little piece on the Low Anthem’s live show up yesterday at Blurt, so you’ll have to make do with that, I guess.

Not the Fall, but who is?

OK, first a word about my marathon. I did a 3:50, which would be fairly disgraceful if I were 25, but is not so, so bad when I am 47. I felt pretty good afterwards. I listened to tunes the whole way, on random, and decided that...

1. BRMC's "American X" may not be a great song overall, but it is a fantastic song for running long distance to. It goes on and on, and envelopes you in a dark, echoey cave. If you listen to it twice in a row, you can get 2 miles out of the way just like that.

2. Glenn Mercer's "Wheels in Motion" is quite possibly a great song, but its languid beat and insistence that there is no hurry about ANYTHING is simply not helpful.

3. It is good to have friends along. When Dustdevil's version of "Hip Priest" came on, it was like having a good buddy cheering from the sidelines...when Dave DeCastro's "All that Remains" followed, I felt like the god of random shuffling was looking out for me.

4. You can't really listen to music after about 21 miles. You hear it. You can't process it. You also can't count to ten.

Oh, and I have a review up today, of a band that sort of, kind of sounds like the FAll, but I forgive them because I don't think they actually meant to copy.


XX Teens
Welcome to Goon Island
(Mute)
US release date: 30 September 2008
UK release date: 28 July 2008

by Jennifer Kelly

Another Prole Art Threat

The Fall would have to rank high on anybody’s list of bands impossible to imitate. Even if you got the right rumbly-clanking bass line, even if the drums were suitably claustrophobic and robotic, even if you found an arresting but meaningless phrase to repeat over and over, the fact remains: you are not Mark E. Smith. End of story. So, when I say that XX Teens come close, that’s not nothing. It’s a fairly remarkable accomplishment. It’s even more impressive since it may not be what they’re aiming for.

Welcome to Goon Island is the first full-length for this London-based, art-school-credentialed quintet, a barrage of stuttering, bass-buzzing beats; oblique, sometimes surreally funny lyrics; and stinging, minimalist guitars. That’s the basic recipe, but there is no shortage of added ingredients. You will also hear, at various intervals, a full-brass band, a 2 Tone saxophone, steel drums, syrupy harp arpeggios and a long monologue with peace activist Brian Haws. The phrase “anything goes” comes to mind.

Read the rest here

“Darlin’”