2001 - Crop-Dust
? August - Single: Rude (All The Time)
5 November - Album: Are You Are Missing Winner
After last year's (I realise now) excellent The Unutterable was there an inevitability about a big Fall personnel change? Adam Helal, Neville Wilding, Tom Head and Julia Nagle all departed to be replaced by Ben Pritchard, Jim Watts and Spencer Birtwistle.
A significant addition was Ed Blaney who, as well as co-writer, would be Fall broker, manager, and producer as well as friend and collaborator with MES.
Rude (All The Time) was a limited edition issue single so wasn't one that I was familiar with. (I'd stopped buying singles back in the mid-90s but even if I hadn't I'm not sure I'd have been switched on enough to get hold of this mail order special.) Smith, Blaney and an acoustic guitar turn out an interesting little tune that would have benefited from a full group and studio treatment I'm sure.
B-side I Wake Up in the City is a terrific 'scuzzy' guitar number that Smith shouts and splutters through but by the time the album is released it has morphed into the slower and slightly calmer My Ex-Classmates' Kids.
I never gave up on The Fall but at the time I was struggling after Are You Are Missing Winner. It was the fourth successive album I didn't love. (I have much better opinions of Levitate, The Marshall Suite and particularly The Unutterable these days.)
Similarly, Are You Are Missing Winner isn't at all as bad as I remember.
Jim's The Fall opens the record and the refrain 'We are the new Fall' lets you know that the new line-up is in place on a track that sounds like a Fall album opener should. The Lead Belly cover Bourgeois Town follows. Smith and the group are in great form here, driving this blues song into new, aggressive territory.
Next up is Crop-Dust. In an album that, in general, feels spontaneous or even a bit rough about the edges, Crop-Dust stands out as a finished article. This might not be remembered as a classic Fall line-up but the group do everything right here while Smith's vocal lashes out at, well, I've got no clue to be honest (but the crew over at The Annotated Fall have had a go.) Lovely false fade-out too.
Kick The Can is divided into two very distinct parts. The first couple of minutes has a psych/baggy feel that wouldn't have seemed out of place ten years earlier. Then we get something that's more akin to a sped-up Words of Expectation.
After chart 'success' in 1987 with There's a Ghost in my House there's another R. Dean Taylor cover in the shape of Gotta See Jane. It's not great. It feels a bit too fast, especially with Smith trying some 'proper' singing on it.
Ibis-Afro Man polarises opinion. Some people think it's terrible, some people think it's worse than that! Only joking (but not much.) There are a couple of interesting sections, very early on and then the live section for the last four or five minutes. The rest of it is practically unlistenable.
The Acute calms things down, in a 'country' kind of way, musically at least. Smith seems to be addressing someone in a passive-aggressive style rather than giving it full on hate for a change. Hollow Mind keeps the acoustic guitar front and centre and MES has wound up the venom with whoever he's talking about in this one.
The album closes with Reprise: Jane – Prof Mick – Ey Bastardo. It's a bit all over the place, and is one for you if you like hearing the group rehearse/mess about. Strangely the snippets of Gotta See Jane sound better than the standalone track.
Crop-Dust is the (fairly easy) choice for this year. There's an 'angry son of Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers' feel about the track to me and there's nothing wrong with that. It's The Fall as machine. It drones and cranks and throbs and thrashes and mows down everything in its path.
5 November - Album: Are You Are Missing Winner
It is cruel and blind and does not compensate
After last year's (I realise now) excellent The Unutterable was there an inevitability about a big Fall personnel change? Adam Helal, Neville Wilding, Tom Head and Julia Nagle all departed to be replaced by Ben Pritchard, Jim Watts and Spencer Birtwistle.
A significant addition was Ed Blaney who, as well as co-writer, would be Fall broker, manager, and producer as well as friend and collaborator with MES.
Rude (All The Time) was a limited edition issue single so wasn't one that I was familiar with. (I'd stopped buying singles back in the mid-90s but even if I hadn't I'm not sure I'd have been switched on enough to get hold of this mail order special.) Smith, Blaney and an acoustic guitar turn out an interesting little tune that would have benefited from a full group and studio treatment I'm sure.
B-side I Wake Up in the City is a terrific 'scuzzy' guitar number that Smith shouts and splutters through but by the time the album is released it has morphed into the slower and slightly calmer My Ex-Classmates' Kids.
I never gave up on The Fall but at the time I was struggling after Are You Are Missing Winner. It was the fourth successive album I didn't love. (I have much better opinions of Levitate, The Marshall Suite and particularly The Unutterable these days.)
Similarly, Are You Are Missing Winner isn't at all as bad as I remember.
Jim's The Fall opens the record and the refrain 'We are the new Fall' lets you know that the new line-up is in place on a track that sounds like a Fall album opener should. The Lead Belly cover Bourgeois Town follows. Smith and the group are in great form here, driving this blues song into new, aggressive territory.
Next up is Crop-Dust. In an album that, in general, feels spontaneous or even a bit rough about the edges, Crop-Dust stands out as a finished article. This might not be remembered as a classic Fall line-up but the group do everything right here while Smith's vocal lashes out at, well, I've got no clue to be honest (but the crew over at The Annotated Fall have had a go.) Lovely false fade-out too.
Kick The Can is divided into two very distinct parts. The first couple of minutes has a psych/baggy feel that wouldn't have seemed out of place ten years earlier. Then we get something that's more akin to a sped-up Words of Expectation.
After chart 'success' in 1987 with There's a Ghost in my House there's another R. Dean Taylor cover in the shape of Gotta See Jane. It's not great. It feels a bit too fast, especially with Smith trying some 'proper' singing on it.
Ibis-Afro Man polarises opinion. Some people think it's terrible, some people think it's worse than that! Only joking (but not much.) There are a couple of interesting sections, very early on and then the live section for the last four or five minutes. The rest of it is practically unlistenable.
The Acute calms things down, in a 'country' kind of way, musically at least. Smith seems to be addressing someone in a passive-aggressive style rather than giving it full on hate for a change. Hollow Mind keeps the acoustic guitar front and centre and MES has wound up the venom with whoever he's talking about in this one.
The album closes with Reprise: Jane – Prof Mick – Ey Bastardo. It's a bit all over the place, and is one for you if you like hearing the group rehearse/mess about. Strangely the snippets of Gotta See Jane sound better than the standalone track.
Crop-Dust is the (fairly easy) choice for this year. There's an 'angry son of Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers' feel about the track to me and there's nothing wrong with that. It's The Fall as machine. It drones and cranks and throbs and thrashes and mows down everything in its path.
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