Vanity and Presumption

6 Nov 2000 - Album: The Unutterable "I loved you now and now you're gone" A confession - I really didn't like The Unutterable when it came out. I still didn't like it when I gave it a listen before one of The Fall Cups over on The Fall Forum some years ago. Hearing odd tracks after Mark E Smith's death made me think I might have got this album slightly wrong but I haven't heard it in its entirety in about eight years. Here goes... ... What was I thinking? This is tremendous! (I might write about why my taste may have changed in a future post but for now let's crack on with this so I can listen to it on repeat.) MES sounds in great form from the off and the production ( Grant Showbiz back in the chair for a studio album for the first time since Shift-Work ) is much cleaner than recent efforts. In fact, is The Unutterable the most different and most the same album in the Fall catalogue? As well as travelling some well worn Fall paths is ...

22 March: Single - Touch Sensitive 19 April: Album - The Marshall Suite 16 August: Single - F-'Oldin' Money "Where chewing gun is chewed, the chewer is pursued" I find myself at odds with The Fall cognoscenti at times about the group's more lightweight 'poppier' songs. I tend to like them because well, rather The Fall do this stuff properly than anyone else right? So I love Touch Sensitive. OK - it's a long way from a great Smith lyric or delivery but it just works. Having said that, I don't think we needed the  seven minute dance version . If you're here you probably know that it was used in a Vauxhall Corsa ad and sparked a court case so I'll leave that there and give you a link to the court judgement if you want a dull read for half an hour. The Marshall Suite continued the run of nineties 'good in parts' albums. It started with the two singles (Touch Sensitive and F-'Oldin' Money) released in 1999 and the ...

9 February: EP - Masquerade 3 March: 21st John Peel Session - Calendar, Touch Sensitive, Masquerade, Jungle Rock 18 October: 22nd John Peel Session - Bound Soul One, Antidotes, Perfect Day, Shake Off "It was a very good month last week" More than four months after it appeared on Levitate, Masquerade was released as a single. Depending on whether you picked up CD1, CD2 or the 10 inch single (or all three) you had three versions of the lead track plus various extra songs. I've been warming to Masquerade since listening to Levitate and it's head and shoulders over most of the tracks that accompanied it. Calendar, co-written with Badly Drawn Boy , has its merits but Ivanhoe's Two Pence and Scareball don't do it for me while the live versions of Ol' Gang (MES sounds like he's in a different room to the group) and Spencer Must Die are for the completists. The first John Peel session of the year was recorded in February and saw the light of day i...

29 September: Album - Levitate "Feeling pretty Manc" (Note to self - get your act together and do these more often) As there's only one release for me to get stuck into this year I'll start with a more personal recollection. To my great regret (and not without a little bit of shame) this was the last year I saw The Fall live. They were in my home town (at a different venue to where I first saw them 15 years previously), in a club that was well known for its indie nights and one where I'd spent many happy hours through the eighties and early nineties. The group were not in a good place at the time and MES was going through his 'start, stop, take them off for a pep talk' phase. That happened early in the piece here with the group leaving the stage via an emergency exit. I can't remember how long they were off but certainly long enough for us to wonder if they were coming back. I went with a friend who, unknown to me at the time, was battling a...

12 February: Single - The Chiselers 10 June: Album - The Light User Syndrome 18 August: 20th John Peel Session - Beatle Bones, DIY Meat, Spinetrak, Spencer "It's called speed, I wrote a song about it" The Chiselers single was the opening Fall release in 1996. It's a bit of an odd one for me, it sounds like there are a few decent ideas here but maybe they don't all fit in the same song. As the single was three versions of the song it was one you played the life out of or filed away. It did get to number 13 in that year's Festive Fifty so there were plenty of people in the former camp. June saw the release of The Light User Syndrome album. If you read the Fall in Fives (and if you haven't you really should) you'll know that author Steve Pringle thinks this album would be great if it were 10-15 minutes shorter. It's hard to disagree. The album makes a positive start with D.I.Y. Meat, and Das Vulture Ans Ein Nutter-Wain is an interesting ...

27 February: Album - Cerebral Caustic 7 August: Live album - The Twenty-Seven Points 22 December: 19th John Peel Session - He Pep, Oleana, The Chiselers, The City Never Sleeps "From remedies and Prozac, I'm kinda two-tone" According to Brix's book she was shocked at the state of the group and MES' health when she returned in 1994. She was also disappointed with the Cerebral Caustic album, particularly the way MES handled the recording of his vocals. I think there are a lot of high points on the album but those comments make you wonder if a fully fit and compliant Smith could have taken it up a few notches. The album roars in with (probable) anti-Political Correctness rant The Joke, and then Brix giving Don't Call Me Darling the full treatment. Other favourites from the record are Life Just Bounces and The Aphid, a song that manages to sound like a cover of a weird dance craze song from the 1950s or 60s. The album does peter out somewhat but befor...

12 January: 17th John Peel Session - M5, Behind The Counter, Reckoning, Hey Student 18 April: Single - 15 Ways 3 May: Album - Middle Class Revolt 17 December: 18th John Peel Session - Glam Racket - Star, Jingle Bell Rock, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Numb at the Lodge "You post out 60-page computer printouts on the death of earth's forests" Unusually there was a gap of more than a month between recording (2 December 1993) and transmission of this John Peel session. It was actually recorded before the release of the Behind The Counter single, last year's choice . I haven't found out why that should be the case. Perhaps Black Country Rock's Fall Peel Sessions Project or the You Must Get Them All blog will have the answer when they reach this session. M5 is quicker than the recorded version and the keyboard has more of an echoey sci-fi effect but it's none the worse for both of those things. Reckoning seems a return to the more considered Shif...