2010 - Bury Pts. 1+3
17 April: Single - Bury!
26 April: Album - Your Future Our Clutter
26 April: Album - Your Future Our Clutter
"A new way of recording, a chain around the neck"
Another limited edition single paved the way this year. Bury! #2+4 was backed with Cowboy Gregori for International Record Store Day.
Cowboy Gregori references YFOC's Cowboy George and is a decent piece of rockabilly/callback to the old 'country and northern' sound. I far prefer the longer album version of Bury! I think this one misses from leaving out the 'lo-fi' introduction.
Your Future Our Clutter landed the same month. If you're thinking 'only nine tracks, I feel a bit short-changed' then that is the wrong thing to think. It's a great record start to finish. The group are well and truly settled in and produce some astonishing work. It fits and flows beautifully. The last great flawless Fall album?
O.F.Y.C. Showcase is a great opener. MES opens things up and the group slowly join in. It builds and builds. Drums, keys, bass and then guitar. While not a preview of songs on the album as with the Kurious Oranj Overture it's certainly a "showcase of Fall talent". Some lyrical foreshadowing too. I do enjoy MES cross-referencing his own work.
Cowboy Gregori references YFOC's Cowboy George and is a decent piece of rockabilly/callback to the old 'country and northern' sound. I far prefer the longer album version of Bury! I think this one misses from leaving out the 'lo-fi' introduction.
Your Future Our Clutter landed the same month. If you're thinking 'only nine tracks, I feel a bit short-changed' then that is the wrong thing to think. It's a great record start to finish. The group are well and truly settled in and produce some astonishing work. It fits and flows beautifully. The last great flawless Fall album?
O.F.Y.C. Showcase is a great opener. MES opens things up and the group slowly join in. It builds and builds. Drums, keys, bass and then guitar. While not a preview of songs on the album as with the Kurious Oranj Overture it's certainly a "showcase of Fall talent". Some lyrical foreshadowing too. I do enjoy MES cross-referencing his own work.
Bury Pts. 1 + 3 is right up there with the group's best work. It has to be the choice for this year. More down by the video link. Mexico Wax Solvent - heck of a dirty bass on this but Smith is absolutely the focus and the lyrics pour out of him. He doesn't make "rice with screwdrivers or fried chicken with a trowel", be interesting to find out who does.
Cowboy George rattles along for three minutes, like a country and western song on speed, and then we have the best part of another three in a synth/reverb land of "unseen footage, unseen knowledge". Hot Cake brings a pounding beat and an angry Smith cross-referencing both Chino and Slippy Floor.
Y.F.O.C. / Slippy Floor - YFOC is a long introduction ("Tales from the Castleford crypt") to the real business - the hectic, frantic, unstoppable Slippy Floor. Songs mentioning hospitals step up from here (although I think Tommy Shooter from Imperial Wax Solvent starts that off) and MES is clearly concerned with slippy floors in hospitals and apartment halls. (He'd broken his hip around this time.) It's thrilling.
Chino is a darker interlude. A subdued, reflective Smith asking "when do I quit?" a hospital, a hell, life? - does he even want to quit The Fall? (He did subsequently deny this as a possibility but you are left wondering.)
Funnel of Love - Great cover of the 'First Lady of Rockabilly' Wanda Jackson original. Cyndi Lauper tackled it in 2016. I'd like to think because she heard The Fall's version but I'm probably stretching things. (I don't think I've mentioned the Before The Fall compilation album yet. Buy it, would be my advice.)
Weather Report 2 is a superb closer. MES called it a "sound experiment" in an interview with the Quietus. The more structured song fades away after two and a half minutes leaving Smith and a machine-like throb to bring the song home. It's tender, sad and yet has a sense of humour too when it comes to saying the Murder She Wrote cast deserved to die.
Cowboy George rattles along for three minutes, like a country and western song on speed, and then we have the best part of another three in a synth/reverb land of "unseen footage, unseen knowledge". Hot Cake brings a pounding beat and an angry Smith cross-referencing both Chino and Slippy Floor.
Y.F.O.C. / Slippy Floor - YFOC is a long introduction ("Tales from the Castleford crypt") to the real business - the hectic, frantic, unstoppable Slippy Floor. Songs mentioning hospitals step up from here (although I think Tommy Shooter from Imperial Wax Solvent starts that off) and MES is clearly concerned with slippy floors in hospitals and apartment halls. (He'd broken his hip around this time.) It's thrilling.
Chino is a darker interlude. A subdued, reflective Smith asking "when do I quit?" a hospital, a hell, life? - does he even want to quit The Fall? (He did subsequently deny this as a possibility but you are left wondering.)
Funnel of Love - Great cover of the 'First Lady of Rockabilly' Wanda Jackson original. Cyndi Lauper tackled it in 2016. I'd like to think because she heard The Fall's version but I'm probably stretching things. (I don't think I've mentioned the Before The Fall compilation album yet. Buy it, would be my advice.)
Weather Report 2 is a superb closer. MES called it a "sound experiment" in an interview with the Quietus. The more structured song fades away after two and a half minutes leaving Smith and a machine-like throb to bring the song home. It's tender, sad and yet has a sense of humour too when it comes to saying the Murder She Wrote cast deserved to die.
But the choice is Bury Pts. 1 + 3. As with a couple of other top drawer Fall tracks, Spectre vs Rector an Blindness, it starts lo-fi and grubby like an out of tune transistor radio then gets cleaner and harder. It thuds, it squelches, it's furious, it's calm, the guitars carve through it - if this is is a Fall 'Battle Plan' then I surrender!
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