This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Listening to…The Fall, This Nation’s Saving Grace

I can’t really add many more words to the volumes written about and around The Fall. We know the pack drill. Mark E. Smith, loveable curmudgeon (though I once read an interview with him where reflecting on seeing a crew of Welsh nationalists he regarded them as essentially proto-fascist which seemed a bit harsh). Fantastic group – ramshackle approach but built on solid foundations. Near perpetual changing line-up. Scary interpersonal dynamics. Wouldn’t want to be a member – looks like too much hard work.

But here’s an oddity, listening to them a while back it struck me that my favourite songs and albums were the ones where Brix Smith was involved – bar the Infotainment Scan from quite some time later which I have an odd regard for – which reminds me, I saw them live once in the Tivoli and I think it was when they were touring TIS but I have almost no memory of the gig, literally next to nothing other than Mark E. Smith hunched over a microphone and a snippet of their most interesting cover of Lost in Music.

Brix Smith was a formidable presence in her own right and brought something… not quite sure what, perhaps an expansiveness of vision that added to their output. Listen to her vocals on C.R.E.E.P. and other tracks. The songs resonate. And I think that conversely it allows Mark E. Smith to work off and against them in a way that ups his game too.

Anyhow, for me that shining moment is encapsulated on This Nations Saving Grace from 1985 and perhaps its single finest moment, albeit one that is surrounded by many others, L.A. Here all the promise of the Fall, the energy, bleak enthusiasm, the chaos, the eager intelligent cynicism is boiled down into a remarkably disciplined few minutes of throbbing bassline, motorik beats and madness. I’ve often thought of putting together a playlist of songs like it (one thinks of Public Image, etc) but why bother when the song itself is so perfect.

But the other tracks from that album – all classic. And not one of them sounds like L.A. Instead the relative smoothness of that track is contrasted with complexity both musical and lyrical. And it all works. Spoilt Victorian Child, To Nkroachment Yarbles, Bombast, Couldn’t Get Ahead, Cruisers Creek (though I think the latter was a non-album single). And good for them for having a song titled I Am Damo Suzuki. It’s nigh on thirty five years since I first heard (and taped) this, and they’re embedded in my musical memory.

An essential album.

L.A.

Cruiser’s Creek

Spoilt Victorian Child

Bombast

Gut of the Quantifier

I Am Damo Suzuki