The Fall Album: “Fall Heads Roll”

The Fall just released one of the best albums of their careers. Fall Heads Roll comes through on every level. The Fall is a truly unique band and incredible on so many fronts, but the pleasures inherent in The Fall are often subtle and apparent after repeated listenings. The new album is immediately breathtaking with humor, vitriol, noise, all benefited by clear punchy production. Every moment is genius and control. Finally here is a Fall disc that you can pass onto those friends who you have been trying to convert for years.

Another Fall record...I do not know...It is actually not so bad. The problem is that despite the incredible musical diversity ME Smith has displayed over the years it does allways sound the same, with some exceptions. It is still very solid and there are as allways a few pearls included that will make any fan happy. But in a sense it is a very very commercial approach in the sense that it appeals to a very very well established fan-base.

In a few places this works as flashy garage-rock pop with a psychedelic bent - "Pacifying Joint" and "What About Us" are highlights. Mostly this just lays there flat. The great groove "Blindness" gets an idiosynchratic treatment, light on guitar, that's quite infgerior to its live sound.

I've been a fan of this group for over 25 years. In fact, The Fall is my favorite group of all time. And I'll always say that, even in spite of the ho-hum quality of their oddly pedestrian and enervating newest effort. FHR just doesn't excite me at all. MES and the crew don't sound much excited as well. I can't even claim to have heard much of anything on here that is innovative, edgy, or thrilling in any of the tracks. Quite a kick in the pants given that The Fall very rarely fail to incite, excite, or at the very least, engage. Their Move cover doesn't add any fresh perspective to that great chestnut, "I Can Hear The Grass Grow." But that's a familiar problem with covers anyway. Far worse, the album's net effect is one where the tracks seem to coalesce into little more than a brooding background noise; a case of some tracks being merely more "alright" than others. Nothing much is really distinctive or memorable. I've heard fellow fans rave about the thing, but I'm left scratching my head in bewilderment as to exactly why. FHR reminds me of something like a Fall-"lite" comfort food: big on approximation of a distinctive Fall flavor, but with an unpleasant aftertaste of chemical hocus pocus that is simply rich in empty calories. The latest slice of strife from this venerable organization seems to be woefully short on weird and wiggy insight into life's rich pageant, and more about unfocused, foot wagging restlessness. MES appears to be moving through the work in a kind of listless somnabulistic shuffle: an aimless fugue of merely going through the motions, and with a plodding, overly smooth indy-rock sensibility; a largely uninspired cakewalk through an already well carved out ( and utterly predictable) indy-rock territory. I've not been a stranger to Fall music not impressing me initally only to have me crazed about it in subsequent listens. That was the story for much of the early 90's Fall. I've played FHR about six times in the several months I've owned it, and it all still feels like a lump of undigested pasta in my gut. I may feel kinder towards it in time, but so far being moved to only give it six plays in three months doesn't bode well for a change of heart epiphany coming upon me like a lightning bolt.

"Country On The Click/The New Real Fall Album," their previous effort, was terrific: a compendium of rich and grating surprises. this one ain't like that. I'm sorry to say. And I take absolutely no pleasure in saying it. Yes, I'm a "look Back Bore" and proud of it. MES has seemingly disparaged old friends of The Fall. He appears to want you young 'uns to focus on the contemporary Fall ouevre and forget about the past. It's understandable that he wants to remain relevent and garner new and younger audiences. But listen kid, if you're new to this band seek out the older stuff first. You'll see why they were - and are - the greatest avant post-punk band there is. No, I won't say that his best work is behind him, I won't go that far, but it is undeniably certain that the MES of the late 70's and 80's created THE ouevre that made The Fall legendary. This release shouldn't be your first taste of the group. If it is and you love it, great - but you won't have much of a clue why THe Fall came to be the gold standard for many of us older and discerning fans. Or, as the Late John Peel said in effect: The standard other groups are measured against.

Been trying to think recently of albums or songs I like to play at the very highest registers. Right out of the box I'd have to say The Annoying Song on Independent Worm Saloon although nearly everything on that monster album by the Surfers gets the job done. This list is I realise potentially endless. One time I actually owned two copies of The Velvet Underground's Another View, the one with two versions of Hey Mr. Rain on it, and I used to blast both of these songs out at the same time on two different Toshibas I had rigged up--bliss on several levels that was. Ever hear the stunning quarter hour version of Hey Mr. Rain on the Velvet's 1993 Live MCMXCIII? Boggle up your eardrums entirely that one will. Yo La Tengo's ten minute Spec Bebop now that I think of it does something similar, as do the absurdly sublime electric bagpipes Bon Scott himself plays on AC/DC's It's A Long Way To The Top. Rory Gallagher's Irish Tour is a bleeding barnstorm too when turned way up--his band is unbelievably solid and that dude on keyboards, Lou Martin, boy is he a stupendously funky piece of work. Still though the record is all about Rory's live guitar and when you've got your gear ramped up to eleven the Stratocaster sounds like it's coming straight out of Heaven. And then finally there's this album by The Fall--to characterise it as colossal plugged-in chunks of amplitude is to understate matters considerably. The first song, Ride Away, is a percussive and wonky toe tapper and then from Pacifying Joint on down you're in Smiffy and the boys' boom boom room. Can you honestly believe how farking good Blindness sounds? And what about What About Us? Even the acoustic Early Days of Channel Fuhrer benefits enormously from a leg up in the audio knob department. Volume rocks to my way of thinking.