Disco de The Fall: “Cerebral Caustic [Bonus CD]”

As a foolish teenager I once thought I was in love with one my pen pals in England. He had recorded me a cassette with some of the music that would define the next decade of my life, and one of the most fabulous songs was "Life Just Bounces" by the Fall. After a considerable amount of overplay and simple abuse of the cassette that included "Life Just Bounces", the tape finally gave up the ghost, and while the English guy was long gone, the song was still in my head... so I went on what seemed a futile search for the song on CD. It took me years to find it, and of course thanks to the re-release of much of The Fall's earlier material, I was able to find the song first on a 2 CD set called "The 27 points" but it was a rather bad live version, and then I found Cerebral Caustic, and here is my beloved "Life Just Bounces" in all the original glory I remembered.

I have to say that this album is very much like other Fall albums. Mark E. Smith delivers vocals in a very... well, unique, Mark E. Smith kind of way. In order to understand quite what I mean by this, you will just have to listen to a sample. It takes some getting used to. There are usually female backing vocals which take the edge off his alarming style. The music is often aggressive sounding and resounds with a certain sameness that is very signature Fall. It can make listening to their records somewhat tedious and often you will find you have to be in the right kind of mood for The Fall. It can be a highly idiosyncratic and maybe even annoying experience if you are not in the mood for it. What impresses me most is their prolific longevity. And how they have remained so obscure over time?

"Life Just Bounces" is a glorious song. I love it, and for me, the price of the CD was worth simply having that song.

How dare the Fall play a bunch of three-minute songs in a verse/chorus/verse/chorus structure? Because they're the Fall and they do what they damn well please. There is no one Fall sound. But everything they do sounds like them and no one else. This album is such a joy, I don't understand why critics have maligned it over the years. It's not a "definitive" album to hand to new Fall listeners, I guess, but really, who cares? The experiment goes on, to this day even, no looking back. Music this good doesn't need a context.

First off I must say that this is easily my favorite Fall album from the 90's. Not a very popular opinion, but it's my own. 4 1/2 stars easy.

So, how do you make it better?

Easy, give it the Castle/Sancuary reissue treatment. A Peel Session. A whole album's worth of rough mixes (quite nice) the singles and remixes too.

5 stars.

There are two types of LP by the Fall. On the one hand there are the 'Fall purist' LP's such as Dragnet, Grotesque (after the gramme), Middle Class Revolt and Are you are missing winner. On the other hand you have the LP's that Fall purists tend to be ashamed of such as This Nations Saving Grace, The Frenz Experiment and the Infotainment Scan. This LP does not really come under either of these headings. In my view it is a really excellent and underrated record. No fault can be found with the first five tracks. 'Life Just Bounces' remains one of the most beutiful tracks ever. Excellent stuff

I think Mark E. Smith best summed up this album from The Fall's dark mid-90s period himself in the first line from Cerebral Caustic's "The Aphid" when he sarcasticly intoned "and who could ever forget this one?" To me it's the sound of a guy who has been in the game a long time and is tired of hearing himself at this stage of his career - working through a rough patch. I believe one of the other reviews here on Amazon calls this an album of pop songs and kind of assumes that it was disliked by critics for going in a straightforward direction. Nothing could be further from the truth. "Bonkers In Phoenix" is certainly one of the most "out there" and challenging Fall compositions, comprised of tape loops and noise and pretty psychedelic sounding much like some of Throbbing Gristle's work. The real failure here is the other songs, which are shorter but unlike The Fall's best work in the context of pop (The Infotainment Scan comes to mind as a great Fall album made up of "pop" songs) the material on Cerebral Caustic is mostly just forgettable - hence my quote pulled from "The Aphid" above.

I love this band, they have produced great work in pretty much every incarnation they've existed in up to the present. The problem is that when a band exists as long as The Fall and they've got nearly thirty studio albums not to mention all of the other stuff, it becomes nearly impossible for a dud to not exist in the catalog somewhere. As the other reviews here provide examples, with The Fall everyone's got their own opinion of what the best or better albums are, but to say this one's a five star is pretty hard to follow. I'd only reserve that rating for stuff like Hex Enduction Hour or This Nation's Saving Grace.