[atsonicpark]

Also, surprised you didn't have Dragnet in your top 10. I love that album. So dark... damn.. "before the moon falls" and "spector vs rector" are amazing, spector is probably one of the most bizarre songs I've ever heard, a no wave (! Yes, I know the Fall aren't no wave -- but that song comes close; you know what I mean if you've heard it, everyone) classic of some sort. FLAT IN ANGLES!

[PAULYBEE2656]

yeah, i totally forgot dragnet... how could i... editing now!

[SuperCreep]

The new album is very good. It almost makes me forget Reformation ever existed and I'd say it's slightly better than Fall Heads Roll and the MoM collaboration. Definitely the most interesting sounding album they've done since Levitate to my ears.

Here's my Fall top ten:

1. Perverted by Language
2. Hex Enduction Hour
3. The Wonderful & Frightening World of the Fall
4. This Nation's Saving Grace
5. Grotesque (After the Gramme)
6. Dragnet
7. Live at the Witch Trials
8. Room to Live
9. The Real New Fall LP
10. The Unutterable

[atsonicpark]

WONDERFUL AND FRIGHTENING WORLD OF THE FALL, a totally underrated album... probably their most underrated besides Bend Sinister..

[Everyneurotic]

i listened to this one the other day again and i have to say that, apart from a few songs that are very very very very very good, it's not too consistent; it sags a lot past half of it.

[dionysusundone]

Originally Posted by atsonicpark

WONDERFUL AND FRIGHTENING WORLD OF THE FALL, a totally underrated album... probably their most underrated besides Bend Sinister..

I never got the hate for Bend Sinister.

[lucyrulesok]

ah, not heard this yet but its on my list..
i think the fall are a really hit and miss band, which is a bloody shame. i saw them in 2004 at ATP having never heard them before and it blew me away, one of the best live shows i've EVER seen.
following that i started collecting up their albums and listening to them alot and fell in love, just like many other people.
then i saw them last year (i think, or maybe 2006, just after reformation was released anyway) and they were absolute shite. it made me feel like MES was totally past it, and just a wanker rather than a genius/wanker. they weren't even vaguely in time and it was just TERRIBLE.
i didn't listen to them for a long time after that, and though recently i've been listening to the old classics again (particularly hex and slates), i haven't heard any of their new stuff, and i'm really frightened of ruining one of my once favourite bands...

[PAULYBEE2656]

as i said before... the fall then and the fall now are not to be compared... it was a different era, different time. each fall album has its own bracket timeframe close bracket and all are different sounding, different vibe different album but still at the same time unmistakably fallesque. just listen to them with the context of the time in your mind. dont try and compare hex or perverted to imperial wax solvent or even the infotainmant scn... they are different works from different peroids.....

look, go out and listen to the peel sessions box set. its relativly cheap for 6 full length cds and an amazing booklet. listen to them in oreder and you will get the full chronological history (up to the fall heads roll album) of a great band..... all recorded live on the hoof.... its an essential listen for fall fans and especially newbies..

 

 

mark smith aint a wanker at all, he is just outrageously smug and self righteous... he always was, even as a 19 year old cutting those excellent early 7 inches!!!!

[johnnywinternoshow]

I saw them last month, the songs off IWS were fucking brilliant live. I really like the album but live they're something else.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by atsonicpark

WONDERFUL AND FRIGHTENING WORLD OF THE FALL, a totally underrated album... probably their most underrated besides Bend Sinister..

I've probably mentioned before, but Levitate is one of my favourite Fall albums. It was the first one I bought, and over 10 years later it still confuses me quite a lot. Rarely gets mentioned, utter fucking wreck of an album in an entirely perfect way. I sometime rant about it being 'the absolute peak of garage rock' when I'm pissed. I wouldn't include Bend Sinister in my favourite records of theirs, but WAFWO is pretty awesome. Extricate's overlooked as well, to my mind.

Personally, I can see that there's a bit more consistency in the early-to-mid-80s Fall, but there are plenty albums since 1990 or so that are easily the measure of the early ones. Then again, I really like Are you are missing winner, which it seems absolutely no-one likes.

I'm ordering the new record now-ish.

[demonrail666]

The Fall are maybe the only band whose music I think could sustain me for a lifetime without feeling the need to listen to anyone else. So saying that, I set standards for their releases extremely highly. And this just doesn't really cut it for me. The electronic elements work well and demonstrate a desire to experiment, but taken as a whole the album seems to lack any real direction. I strongly believe that, with IWS, MES has become something of a rebal without a cause. Which isn't to say that the album is bad, as such, just that we're talking about The Fall here, arguably the greatest band in the history of British R'n'R (listen to the Peel Box Set for proof) and as such expectations have to be higher than they would be for any other band I can think of right now.

That IWS is no Hex, or Dragnet, is not surprising, and hardly cause for concern amongst Fall-ites. That's it's equally no Extricate, however, is slightly more problematic.

[Glice]

The Fall, for me, flal into one of the very few bands who are a lot like 'art' more than 'rock n' roll' for me [warning - exceptionally pretentious statement following]

With art, you can follow it, and not like some of it, and it still forms part of the total narrative of the artist. When the Fall are doing their churning records, I take the time and effort to forgive them, and posit records within the general [aesthetic] narrative of their art. They've always been a garage band, and they've always eschewed [musical] experimentation (in the lay sense), but there's a lot of records, like Levitate, Reformation! or Are you are... where the parity of lyrics, the parity of content seems like a radical idea within the context of the Fall's art in general. I used to be able to forgive SY anything, but the bits that always grated with me - their half-assed postmodernism, the endless pseudo-beat aspirations, their 'hipster' borrowings and their sheer American-ness suddenly, to my mind, left them with zero content a few albums ago (please bear in mind that ATL is probably my second favourite record of theirs). The Fall I have more albums by, and I can still be arsed to seek out the genius in them; moreover, I can still be arsed to see that the duff bits as duff bits and still want to know what the mad old fucker's singing about.

Also, with the Fall, in spite of having read a lot of the books that MES has, in spite of decyphering a lot of 'what they're about', perhaps confuse me more now than they did when I was a lot younger, and there's nothing, absolutely no-one in rock music I can say that about apart from the Fall.

Excuent Euloguous.

[atsonicpark]

I think a lot of the middle-period Fall albums with all the synths and dance drum beats and shit were by far the most boring and ridiculous. I sit there and listen to them and have to ask what the fuck they were thinking most of the time.....

But anyway, Glice, I actually agree with everything you wrote except I haven't read any of Mark E. Smith's books... well, I don't think I have.

[atsonicpark]

PS:
What's a computer?

PPS:
Stop mithering!

PPPS:
Anyone ever disappointed when hearing Mark E. Smith give an interview and he doesn't add "ah" at the end of everything he says?

PPPPS:
"Wings" is such a great fucking song!!

[Glice]

Haven't stopped listening to the new record... yes, very good. Absolutely absurd, which is definitely a good thing. I'm not really impartial when it comes to the Fall, mind you.

[atsonicpark]

yes... absurd is the word.

[PAULYBEE2656]

im down to only having to get my hands on 2 or maybe 3 proper fall albums now...... cant think of anything else to say here, just wanted to keep the thread alive...


no xmas for john quays needs to be heard right now! a aaaaaa aa aaa aaaaaaaa

[Glice]

I'm thinking I might have the 'complete Fall album collection' thanks to next month's pay, minus rent (I'm five records short).

[Toilet & Bowels]

i don't know what's wrong with you lot

[Tokolosh]

This album is amazing. I can't get enough of it.
Surely one of the best releases this year.