The Fall

Fall Heads Roll

Fall Heads Roll is, I am informed, the Fall's decidedly intimidating twenty-fifth studio album since it formed in 1976. Actually it would be more accurate to describe this as frontman Mark E. Smith's twenty-fifth album, since the band around him has changed so often it is to the original lineup as a scalpel is to a Neolithic flint axe, but I digress. I should confess at this point that I am somewhat less than familiar with the music of The Fall, and am therefore unable to judge this in the context of any of their earlier work, so this review should be read with that in mind, and I apologise in advance to the spirit of the late John Peel (whose favourite band they were) for any blunders.

Listening to the album at a single sitting is a draining experience. The sound is generally harsh, and at times very stark, never more so than on 'Ride Away', the opening track. The accompaniment to Smith's vocals is minimal in the extreme, with the guitar restricted to a single chord every other beat. As a result of this, Eleni Poulou's intermittent synthesiser-and-backing-vocal interludes come as a relief from the unrelenting dryness of the rest of the song. This is not, it should be emphasised, a criticism - it's a very good track, and only improves with repeated playing. It's just that when the sum of its component parts is seemingly so meagre, it is utterly incomprehensible that the whole should be so magnificent.

The same, to a greater or lesser degree, can be said of the entire album. Smith's vocal talents could be unfavourably compared to a swollen-tongued, solvent-abusing lovechild of Iggy Pop and Jonathan Ross, and yet are somehow, generally speaking, exactly right. Indeed, after a couple of listenings, it almost seems inconceivable that he could sound otherwise. However, it has to be admitted that the musical and lyrical strengths of the album make a major contribution to its overall quality. The gentleness of 'Early Days' or 'Channel Führer' provides an exquisite counterpoint to most of the rest of the LP, with Smith's vocals inexplicably still managing not to sound incongruous despite their irredeemable weirdness. By contrast, Breaking the Rules, the very next track, is a fast-paced, snarling assault on rock ‘n roll excess, with variations on the line "I broke my mind trying to break the rules" providing a biting refrain.

Unfortunately, there's a very fine line between supreme originality and grinding incoherent rambling, and it's crossed on 'Midnight In Aspen'. Its rambling lyrics concern a man firing a rifle "at the constellation of Orion", with the last word pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable, an affectation that is mildly infuriating to say the least. Combine this with what is really a fairly dull guitar riff, and this number sadly falls very flat indeed. Blindness is also less than successful, though this is mainly because of its length (it clocks in at comfortably over seven minutes). The problem is not that it's a dull track - as on most of the album, the band produces a slick, original sound - but there simply aren't enough ideas to keep it interesting for this long, and as a result it descends into monotony before it's even halfway through. These, though, are exceptions. The album is without doubt worth acquiring, not just because there is almost certainly no one in the world who can replicate Smith's vocal talent, but also because of the strength of the musicians supporting him. If he manages to stick with this lineup it can only be a good thing.

Owen Kennedy

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