THE FALL – LIVE AT THE WITCH TRIALS (STEP FORWARD/CASTLE MUSIC)

THE FALL – LIVE AT THE WITCH TRIALS (STEP FORWARD/CASTLE MUSIC)

Having aged surprisingly well the first album by The Fall is full of luscious snarl and a meandering execution destined and designed to alienate the most square. Emerging from the grime of Manchester this is a blunt statement, very representative of the factory mentality that emerges from such a world. As such it is a pleasingly working class affair, albeit it one with fancy artistic leanings you sense the authors would prefer to turn into tatters at the drop of beat off such an impression.

To buy into The Fall from the ground floor must have been a most exhilarating moment. Immediately from the off confusion rains supreme as Smith repeatedly declares how he is in a trance, seemingly bemused by the input from the most unfortunate of circumstances. This is not a higher state of mind, just a different method/mode of encoding and delivering the facts.

At any time in music history there is a true kudos due to any act bold enough to spew out this kind of statement from the beginning. It is scary to consider just how young these combatants would have been in comparison to how grizzly you would expect them all to be currently. From the off though you sense a mentality of who needs fans when an act is so self contained in itself, so self reliant and undesiring of adulation. Such as Jesus.

Benefiting from unique lyrical spitting it is not only this element that makes the record stand out as the playing is truly all over the shop, wonky and undisciplined in the most perfect manner. While punk was still shifting units with lowest common denominator product here was an act cleaning up on an artist level in comparison.

With “Rebellious Jukebox” their statement of arrival is made in explicit terms as everyone plays to their strengths in defiance of not resembling anyone or anything else on the playlist.

To suggest this band was ahead of its time would be both a grand understatement and disservice to the ingenuity of the outfit. I don’t think PIL ever reached the heights and invention of this opening effort.

By the time the album reaches “Music Scene” it has reached fruition as all bile gets extracted and arrives in ultimate measures. I cannot imagine a more damning composition being unleashed at such a time, encapsulating and eclipsing all its path in one foul swoop. For the win.

With its lyrical repetition and thundering convulsive beats “No Xmas For John Quays” sounds like the first hardcore song spewing out a time when punk was very much The Exploited and Anti Nowhere League clinging to a warped variation/conceit of what punk became. With its garbled and distorted delivery the words get lent a duel meaning/purpose basically born out of confusing the listener, which ultimately is a trick that they have been employing ever since.

The nail that sticks out gets hammered.

Thesaurus moment: prang.

The Fall
Step Forward
Castle Music

THE FALL – I AM KURIOUS, ORANJ (BEGGARS BANQUET)

THE FALL – I AM KURIOUS, ORANJ (BEGGARS BANQUET)

For the majority of my generation (not the current generation) the reality is that we will have first discovered the Kurious Oranj on the Lee and Herring show This Morning With Richard Not Judy in 1998/99 when Stewart Lee came up with the most corrupting of concepts to have a curious orange ask questions of the pair every week. It was a hideous sight and one that which often turned into the kind of squealing nightmare few things in life are able to muster. Mark E. Smith is able to stir up such emotions in man also.

Released in 1988 I Am Kurious, Oranj was the twelfth Fall studio album and surprisingly produced by Ian Broudie although at the time with his credentials and origins firmly routed in the avant scene of Liverpool in the early eighties this period would have been closer to that than his eventual submersion into the mainstream with the flowery Lightning Seeds. Still on paper it reads as a strange combination.

Spread over thirteen tracks this is a very solid affair. With Brix on board this was long before the band became a pantomime as the solid pairing of Scanlon and Hanley served their master well, on more equal terms than later members would benefit.

Check the guy’s track record.

Perversely the album was written as a soundtrack to a ballet by Michael Clark which sounds as exciting as it does wanky. Thus explains the presence of an overture on the record.

I have read this described as the first Fall record to contain filler and it cannot be denied that it is a frustrating listen but when was a Fall not tough to listen to. Once away from the pure garage roots and treading towards more experimental areas of music there were always going to be unlistenable moments on any Fall record.

Listened to with enthusiastic ears the glam stomp of “New Big Prinz” is for me one of the best opening tracks on any Fall record. This I could play at a wedding.

You feel it is with a sense of appreciation and fondness that he sculpts William Blake’s words to “Jerusalem” into a post-punk structure. The playing on this track is astoundingly good.

With “Wrong Place, Right Time” the band launches into one of my favourite Fall songs and one of my fondest memories that came with the first time I saw the band and how the song trapped and snagged me forever.

Towards the end the album begins to feel mellow and drawn out on tracks such as “Van Plague?” and “Bad News Girl”. These however are songs that arrive with whimsy and suggest something of a strange state of mind about the day they were constructed. In order to hold back so much the band feels tight and patient, well tethered and even tempered. Interestingly these songs also feel particularly damning.

“Big New Priest” perfectly bookends the album as another take on “New Big Prinz” ending proceedings in its second glam stomp of the day.

This is an intricate record; something well listened to with the use of a magnifying glass. As casual background music there isn’t much to be taken but given the time and patience it is a worthy wreck.

Thesaurus moment: novel.

The Fall
Beggars Banquet