LaRM day 145 (The Fall)

Righto, we've got days of the Fall to get through now, starting with first album Live at the Witch Trials (1979).  I've got a lot of time for the Fall (possibly not 15 hours, which is what is in prospect, but that can't be helped) and I particularly like Live at the Witch Trials.  It's one of those rare records that remind you that there's always something new to be done with the old rock and roll formula.  As an exercise in a contrary esoteric style nobody can touch the Fall.  It's all angular, repetitious and scarcely competent, but that's precisely the point.  Mark E Smith's lyrics are as densely obscure as the music and the whole package that he came up with, while being deceptively simple, was really unlike anything else anybody had done before.  In many ways it's really because of Smith's nasty-minded determination to prove that he wasn't like anybody else that meant that the records came out the way they did I guess.  Live at the Witch Trials sets out the formula perfectly, balancing a traditional sense of melody with a Krautrock style of tinny, rolling musical motifs, while Smith tunelessly ranted his avant-poetry over the top.  'Rebellious Jukebox' for instance is a superb pop song, while still being bloody-mindedly un-pop music, and makes the prime demonstration of the Fall's strengths at this early point.  There are plenty of other great tunes ('Industrial Estate' and the 8 minute closer, the vicious 'Music Scene' are particularly good), and although there were better albums to come, Live at the Witch Trials was a singular and impressive opening statement.  The reissue I've got has tons of extra stuff, from the fantastic early singles ('Bingo Master's Break-Out' is one of the early highlights) and a bunch of bootleg versions to a whole live show from 1979 which is uneven to say the least.

1982's Hex Enduction Hour was going to be the Fall's last but it was unexpectedly moderately commercially successful so Smith changed his mind.  Hex Enduction Hour is a great album, in many ways probably the Fall's most influential - there would be far fewer US art-rock acts and certainly no Pavement without it.  It's a tricky album, with some extended circular workouts that don't really go anywhere except into your brain in a maddening way, but there again is Smith's intention played out to its utmost.  It gets off to a phenomenal start with 'The Classical' which is probably one of the band's most endearing tunes, despite it's deliberately obtuse and provocative lyrics, but there's a lot of stuff which can test the patience on Hex Enduction Hour.  The great triumph of the album though is that if you can give yourself up to it, it's enormously rewarding, while simultaneously trying to irritate you.  The repetition that Smith relies on so heavily is given a proper set-up to make itself play a fundamental role in the songs on Hex Enduction Hour by having two drummers pounding this stuff out, and it really makes the looping rhythms the most prominent part of the sound, with the clattering guitars a secondary consideration and Smith's increasingly misanthropic lyrics and vocals a kind of window dressing.

The 1985 compilation album Hip Priest and Kamerads covers the handful of releases the Fall put out on the Kamera label and it's all gold.  In some ways, although scrappy, Hip Priest and Kamerads works as one of the Fall's most enjoyable albums, mainly because it focusses on singles and compilation tracks so they're all relatively melodic and propulsive.  In any event there are some fantastic songs ('The Classical' and 'Hip Priest' make re-recorded appearances, as well as other awesome single tracks 'Look, Know' and 'Room to Live') and the lesser known stuff is just as good - 'Fantastic Life' is one of their best songs.  I've got the original vinyl pressing so don't have the live tracks that were strapped on to the CD reissue, but I gather that's just as well...

Next up is my favourite Fall album, and I think one of the great albums of the 1980's, This Nation's Saving Grace (1985).  Everything about the album works, from the loud and blustery 'Bombast' and 'Barmy' to the lo-fi sound collage of 'Paintwork' and the Can tribute 'I Am Damo Suzuki'.  In fact 'I Am Damo Suzuki' explains a lot about the Fall, not just by making explicit the clearest influences on Smith, but also in showing just how adept the band actually were at that time at utilising sources and adapting them in very clever ways - a large number of Can's melodic lines are melded in the song in a completely coherent way, and it demonstrates that the Fall's ramshackle sound was actually meticulously constructed (at least in the mid-80's when they had a line-up who could really play).  There are some genuinely great songs too, 'Spoilt Victorian Child' being one of those key indie-rock numbers that defined the time. Many Fall purists resented the addition of Smith's then wife Brix Smith to the band because she brought a strong sense of pop melody to the cacophony, but personally I think it lifted the band and made them airier, easier to digest and also meant that the songs had more space, and could breathe a bit more easily.

By 1988 things had grown even more pop, more produced, cleaner, and The Frenz Experiment has Smith's ranting much clearer (but no less easy to decipher lyrically speaking) and some of the band's power is sapped by this studio savvy approach.  Nonetheless there are still great songs, and it's probably the Fall album that the casual listener would find easiest to deal with.  It's quite a processed sound with the drum kit pristinely high in the mix, keyboards and very evenly spaced instrumentation.  'Athlete Cured' and 'In These Times' could almost count as genuine pop songs, but there's still just too much focus on repeated lines to really work as straight pop, and the relentless ten minutes of 'Bremen Nacht' would put off the casual listener.  Even so, it's a relatively easy listen and I think it's a really decent album with some great moments. Contrary to popular opinion though I could do without the cover of the Kinks' 'Victoria'.

Lastly today it's the Fall's peculiar collaboration with Michael Clark's avant-ballet company, I Am Kurious Oranj (1988).  As the title is an allusion both to William and Mary as well as the Swedish erotic groundbreaker I Am Curious Yellow, it is another demonstration of Smith's determination to be at once grimly amusing and wilfully antagonistic, and the music is no less a demonstration of the same impulse.  Half of it is upbeat enough but for the most part it's pretty mocking (the song 'Kurious Oranj' is a kind of snide reggae take-off) and it's one of the band's least charming efforts.  Nevertheless in amongst the time-wasting (a very off-hand molesting of Blake's 'Jerusalem' for instance) is some great stuff and you can't help but love 'Cab It Up!'s silly pastiched cheerfulness.