4 stars
Whoa-whoa-whoa, etc!
Don't ever underestimate Mark E. Smith, The Fall's founder, writer,
vocalist and sole surviving member since they formed thirty-five
years ago. Some may dismiss him as a past his-best drunken parody of
his former glories, and while live shows can be inconsistent to the
point of umbrage, the hardest working man in showbiz is an agent
provocateur and master of of social engineering whose singularly
eccentric shtick falls somewhere between Bernard Manning, James Brown
and Polish theatre director Tadeusz Kantor, the latter of whom made
onstage interventions an art-form just as Smith does.
After years of hiring
and firing a multitude of members, today's Fall has reached some kind
of autumnal stability of sorts, with guitarist Peter Greenway,
drummer Keiron Melling and bassist David Spurr surviving in the ranks
since 2006, while keyboardist and Smith spouse Elena Poulou probably
deserves a medal on all counts for lasting a whole decade.
While best witnessed in
the live arena, there's a vigorous urgency to The Fall's thirtieth
original studio album, named, apparently, after the need to put on
gloves when going out. The opening instrumental shards of 'No
Respects' is just the sucker punch for 'Sir William Wray', a
relentless chug of imagined history which Smith gurgles his way
through with a ferocity rarely heard since 1982's 'Hex Enduction
Hour.'
While sticking to a raw
garage-band template, the palette is broad, from the spoken-word of
'Noise' and sonic
collage of 'Pre-MDMA Years' to the slow-motion horror flick psych of
'Hittite Man' and beyond. Lyrically, Smith is back to creating the
sort of parallel universe narratives that fuelled his equally dark
Hogarthian mythologies on 'Hex' and 1979's 'Dragnet' album.
While there are no real
surprises here for long-term Fall watchers, there's a more considered
artfulness to the musical back-drop. Poulou's keyboards in particular
burble with a fizzing insistence that suggests an inter-band
chemistry that's familiar without ever becoming flabby or complacent.
The List, May 2013
ends
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