The Fall
The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall (Beggars Banquet)
by Nik Rainey
It’s twenty years after the would-be insurrection of punk rock, and it shows – most of the wild-eyed soldiers that made up its ranks are stooped shadows of their former selves, every last one of them a bunch of grumbling old men. Only one footman remains on the front lines – Mark E. Smith, the indefatigable, inscrutable frontman and ill conscience of The Fall, probably because he was a grumbling old man from the day he left the Manchester docks and, inspired by his Link Wray, Can, and Big Youth records, decided to give this rock ‘n’ roll thing a bash. And so it has been, through a collector-smothering outlay of releases and more lineup changes than a South End station house on St. Patrick’s Day, and so, it seems, it ever shall be. Without a single hiatus in two decades, Smith and whatever group of sidepeople he can tolerate that week have held fast to the dictum presented on their first, statement-of-purpose single in December ’77: “Repetition in the music and we’re never gonna lose it.” A Fall record is a formulaic thing, which is not as damning as it sounds – they simply have the right formula: a simple, inspired guitar riff repeated indefinitely over a raw, circular rhythm, varying degrees of weird sounds over the top, and somewhere in between, the tone-deaf locution of Mark Smith ranting on about something. What it is, you can’t quite be sure (even if you have the lyrics written out in front of you), but somehow, it’s dead-on right. The very definition of a cult band – apart from sporadic charges up the British pop charts and the very occasional US radio semi-hemi-demi-hit, The Fall remain a taste palatable to a vociferous few – but their influence looms large over modern music, and their resilience and creative consistency are truly astounding given the constant upheavals running throughout their long and bumpy existence.
The period covered in Beggars Banquet’s current six-disc reissue campaign, 1984-89, comprises the bulk of the “Brix years” (or the “Linda McCartney era,” depending on your sympathies), when the arrival of Mark’s California-born wife on guitar (she made her debut on the transitional [but brilliant] Perverted by Language in ’83) prompted a recasting of The Fall’s signature sound, cutting their rough-trademark working-class scrabble-punk with traces of pure pop, bolstering Smith’s surrealistic social satire and skewed sound experiments with settings of focused rock energy that brought them within the outside bounds of accessibility. The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall (1984), now nearly twice the length of the English vinyl original due to the many contemporaneous tracks tacked on over the years, bursts with expanded possibilities, opening with the high-velocity punkabilly sprint of “Lay of the Land” and assaying every stylistic detour to follow with blithe confidence, whether it’s the surprisingly cheery crankiness of “C.R.E.E.P.,” “Oh! Brother” or “No Bulbs,” the umpteenth appropriation of the “I Wanna Be Your Dog” riff on “Elves,” showcases for longtime six-string scrapper Craig Scanlon like “Draygo’s Guilt” and “Craigness,” or the frankly pretty “Disney’s Dream Debased” (inspired by a decapitation at Disneyland – typical Smithian subject matter, typically obfuscated). The Virgin Prunes’ Gavin Friday guest-yowls on three tracks.
These six discs represent a mere slice of The Fall’s assault on rock convention, now loping into its third decade. Their integrity and refusal to bow to fad or fashion except as it suits them remains a model of the punk ethos and an iconoclastic beacon for unorthodox music-makers the world over. If you’ve yet to acquire this singular taste, these records are a fine place to begin, but be warned: if, once hooked, you find yourself liquidating all your assets to buy up the back catalogue and wind up-ah talking-ah like this-ah all the time-ah, I’m not to be held responsible-ah.
