It has long been my contention that The Fall are the best band to ever come out of England. Better than those annoying Beatles, better than the Rolling Stones, better than The Smiths even. Front man Mark E. Smith, instead of rotting from the inside out given all the booze and seething bile in his seemingly indestructible body, continues to produce album after album full of weird poetry, rants, funky and monstrous beats, and gigantic riffs. You don’t have to know what he’s going on about—in fact it may well be impossible to determine what he’s going on about—but he does it with the urgency of a WWII siren warning of an imminent attack by German bombers. He’s truly one of a kind, spewing his indecipherable harangues that come at you like communiqués from who knows where, all set to the backing of a big, percussive, and frequently intimidating din.
The U.S.A. has never fully embraced Mark E.’s hypnotic cadences or his band’s big beats. But that just goes to show you how backwards we Americans are. In England, his idiosyncrasies have made him an institution, which he is, having released some 600 studio LPs (actually it’s somewhere in the thirties, with an equivalent number of live LPs) since 1979’s Live at the Witch Trials. And over that time he’s utilized an ever-revolving cast of musicians who probably number in the hundreds as well. Even my pal Kid Congo Powers toured with Smith, which puts me at only two degrees of separation from the man I consider England’s best retort to Captain Beefheart.
2005’s Fall Heads Roll (Fall LP #25, if you’re keeping count) is compelling for the simple reason that it features the most primal and unrelenting drums and bass I’ve ever heard. Listen to it, loud, and the head rolling will be yours. It’s like a sonic guillotine, this LP, and it’s a pity—although hardly surprising, given Smith’s tendency to mistreat the help—that the band Smith put together for the LP (Ben Pritchard on guitar, Steve Trafford on bass, Spencer Birtwistle on drums, and Elena Poulou on keyboards and vocals) split acrimoniously four shows into a 2006 tour of the United States, never to return to the fold.
Oh well. So Smith has all the loyalty to his subordinates of Joseph Stalin. And all the warmth—it’s impossible to imagine him writing a love song—of a lump of coal. Geniuses get to be pricks, it’s written into their riders, although one wonders what The Fall might sound like if Smith weren’t such a tyrant. His various line-ups have always had a huge impact on The Fall’s released product; just look at how Smith’s ex-wife Brix Smith turned the band in a surprisingly commercial direction during her tenure as the band’s bassist. And the same goes for Fall Heads Roll; its massive sound is reproduced elsewhere, but never like this; the goddamn thing’s a blitzkrieg, and listening to it you can almost feel the rumble of approaching panzers shaking the ground beneath your feet.
Open “Ride Away” opens on a deceptively low-key note, and comes with the cheesy keyboard riffs and backing vocals of Poulou. It’s one of the LP’s weakest links, albeit catchy in a syncopated and ska-influenced way. Follow-up “Pacifying Joint” is bigger and louder, with Smith repeating the title while Poulou’s keyboards and vocals come in and out and the rhythm section gives you a pounding foretaste of what’s to come. It may not be my favorite tune on the LP but it’s certainly hypnotic, especially when the band joins in chanting the title. The Fall doesn’t really start pummeling your earholes until “What About Us,” which opens with some noise, a brief keyboard blurt, and then—Armageddon. The rhythm section kicks it so hard your ceiling could cave in while Smith hurls often unintelligible non-sequiturs and sings, “Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba” while Poulou occasionally shouts, “Shipman!” What does it all mean? All I can figure is that Smith’s a rabbit from East Germany and there’s a man going about dishing out drugs to old ladies, and Smith’s “What about us?” is his protest about not getting any.
“Midnight Aspen” is a melodic and quiet number, with a nice guitar riff that plays well with others. Meanwhile Smith tosses off phrases that mean something to him and maybe to you but are gibberish to me. Which is okay; I like Smith’s gibberish. He can pull off gibberish like nobody’s business. “Assume” starts with lots of voices bouncing around before the drums kick in like the end of the world, and the guitarist complements it with a captivating riff. Then it rockets into Pure Pounding Pleasure, which is what Smith—if he had a linear bone in his brain—would have entitled the album. Meanwhile he lisps and drags out words, name-drops Cliff Barnes from Dallas reading out the lyrics of “Hey Jude,” and awaits the next go-round of the big blasting caterwaul that you won’t want to listen to with a hangover. “Midnight Aspen Reprise” is just what it purports to be—a return to “Midnight Aspen”—and it highlights Smith in poetic mode (the guy’s serious about being taken as a poet; he’s released two spoken word albums, which given his knack for the abstruse and oracular I can’t even imagine listening to).
The band really takes off on “Blindness,” which features what has to be one of the most brutal bass riffs ever recorded. It comes at you and it cannot be stopped, not with gun, hand grenade, blunderbuss, or sword cane. Meanwhile Poulou throws in the occasional keyboard riff, the drums pound away, and Smith begs a blind man for mercy and sings, “The flag is evil/Welcome: living leg-end/I was walking down the street/I saw a poster at the top/I was only on one leg/The streets were fucked.” Whatever: he could sing the ingredients off a tin of spotted dick and this song would still be a sonic marvel. “I Can Hear the Grass Grow” is a fast-paced and captivating cover of a Move song, and comes complete with a big riff and slightly distorted vocals, while the similarly up-tempo “Bo Demmick” features a big bottom, all bass, and pummeling drums and crashing cymbals. “He was peculiar,” repeats Smith, then “I was mystified/I was mystified/Mystified.” Not as mystified as his listeners mind you, but mystified nonetheless.
“Youwanner” is yet another high-speed, heavy-bottomed ranter and rager, with a catchy melody and Smith repeating the title again and again, a voice crying out in the mayhem produced by the band. “Clasp Hands” speeds along, Smith singing, “We’re goin’ down NYC” to a cool guitar riff and the bludgeoning backdrop of bass and drums, with the latter occasionally dropping out to leave just the guitar to handle instrumental duties. “Early Days of Channel Fuhrer” is a slow slog and boasts a beautiful melody; the guitar is lovely, the drums rudimentary, while Smith sings, “No coffee for me/No room clearance for me.” A beautiful song; who thought the Fall had it in them? And with a long and delirious instrumental fade-out to boot?
“Breaking the Rules” charges along, the bass clearing the way while the keyboard provides a pretty little riff and Smith breaks all the rules, while on the very catchy “Trust in Me” Smith surrenders vocal duties to three guys (Billy Pavone, Kenny Cummings, and Phil Schuster) who aren’t even in the band. Why? Don’t have a clue. What I do know is that “Trust in Me” is yet another speed racer, and features a big guitar riff and a galloping rhythm section, and is guaranteed to make you happy.
Mark E. Smith may as well be from Mars, so scrambled are the lyrical messages he has been sending our way since 1979. But I’ve come to suspect that his words do their work at a subliminal level, because he will—understand what he’s talking about or not—change you. His recourse to repeated catch phrases, set to the backdrop of an equally repetitious and hypnotic rhythm, will send you into a trance, and after that you’re his forever. Just listen to, say, “Rowche Rumble” off It’s the New Thing! (The Step Forward Years). Or his classic paean to his favorite football team, “Theme from Sparta F.C.” If they don’t hypnotize you like a chicken, there’s something wrong with you. Me, I got mesmerized a long time ago, and I’m the happier for it. The Fall live on blood, and rule the Psykick Dance Hall of the mind where the Rebellious Jukebox plays “Who Makes the Nazis?” all day long, and Mark E. Smith is the New Big Prinz whose unintelligible rants will leave you Kurious Oranj, and hankering for more.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
