By this stage in The Fall's career, the Hapless Boy Lard (aka Marc Riley) has been replaced as bassist by Steve Hanley, who was himself replaced by Simon Rogers during the recording of this album, part of The Fall’s almost comedically rapid turnover of musicians. It’s probably only because guitarist Brix Smith is married to Mark E Smith that she stays a fairly stable part of the band. Let’s face it, if you can stand being married to such a famously prickly customer as Smith, you can probably cope with being in a band with him (mind you, it did the opposite for the couples in ABBA and Fleetwood Mac).
This is a more accessible album than Live At The Witch Trials, where Smith’s trademark fuzzy vocals (often through a megaphone), ending most lines with an “-ah”, really come to the fore, mixed fairly low such that the lyrics are less important than the general sense of the voice.
The tracks are great post-punk riff-driven affairs, Barmy being a good nucleus from which a mosh-pit could emerge for example. What You Need has a pulsing bass beat, punctuated by a bit of what sounds like cowbell (but could be an old saucepan) as Smith shouts out “What. You. Need”. It has a vaguely Stranglers feel to it, but for its repetitive simplicity is very addictively catchy. Paint Work is a sound collage piece, Smith rambling about “having liver and sausage yesterday” in a stream of consciousness over wandering guitar, with drop-ins from radio pieces. This was partly accidental, which is gloriously indicative of the somewhat charmingly shambolic nature of Smith’s music; again it’s curiously addictive, reminded me a bit of The Blue Aeroplanes, and I suspect Gerard Langley may have had Mark E Smith as an inspiration.
And one benefit of working through this list is that the track I Am Damo Suzuki has context, since you will recall that Suzuki was the vocalist for the kosmische rock band Can. It’s quite a Can-like track as well, with The Fall drummer Karl Burns doing a fair approximation of the robotic beats of Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit. Apparently Suzuki himself was flattered by the track. I seem to recall I characterised his style as “vocal performance” rather than singing, and that applies to Smith as well.
This album definitely finds the sweet spot in The Fall’s sound – still barmy and a bit chaotic, but not so much as to be tiresome.
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