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. 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.
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“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. He can pull off gibberish like nobody’s business. Meanwhile Smith tosses off phrases that mean something to him and maybe to you but are gibberish to me. “Midnight Aspen” is a melodic and quiet number, with a nice guitar riff that plays well with others.
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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. 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. It may not be my favorite tune on the LP but it’s certainly hypnotic, especially when the band joins in chanting the title. 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’s one of the LP’s weakest links, albeit catchy in a syncopated and ska-influenced way. Open “Ride Away” opens on a deceptively low-key note, and comes with the cheesy keyboard riffs and backing vocals of Poulou.
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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. 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. 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. And all the warmth-it’s impossible to imagine him writing a love song-of a lump of coal. So Smith has all the loyalty to his subordinates of Joseph Stalin. 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. Listen to it, loud, and the head rolling will be yours. 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.Ģ005’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. And over that time he’s utilized an ever-revolving cast of musicians who probably number in the hundreds as well. 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. But that just goes to show you how backwards we Americans are. has never fully embraced Mark E.’s hypnotic cadences or his band’s big beats. 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. 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.
#Fall fall fall fall fall full#
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. Better than those annoying Beatles, better than the Rolling Stones, better than The Smiths even.
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It has long been my contention that The Fall are the best band to ever come out of England.