The Fall Stands Their Ground

By Hugh Elton '12

I consider myself to be a pretty big fan of The Fall. Despite this, I will admit to not having known about their last album, 2008’s Imperial Wax Solvent, until after I heard last month’s Your Future, Our Clutter, and I have yet to play catch-up, in part because it undoubtedly wouldn’t stop there. I suppose I’m just not agile or dedicated enough to keep up with a band that has released a studio album almost every year since 1979 and something like twice that number of live albums and other releases in the same time span. Earnestly familiarizing yourself with that sort of oeuvre seems like the equivalent of reading the Bible cover to cover after deciding you like going to church. And once you do that, you’re fated to become the kind of freak that everyone avoids at parties because any topic of conversation can be related to this or that parable that oh-my-stars-I-can’t-believe-you’ve-never-heard-it-it’ll-change-your-life. So, without any false pretension to expertise, I will say that Your Future is some solid Fall.

Notable super-fan John Peel famously described The (mighty) Fall as always different and always the same, a characterization that continues to apply: I feel safe in presuming that this is a fairly new line-up, considering lead singer and sole original member Mark E. Smith’s habit of regularly firing everybody and hiring an entirely new band. But fortunately, the buzzing bass lines, grating guitars, halfwitted synth phrases, repetition, repetition, and Smith’s inscrutable vernacular and shriveled, drunk beat poet speak-singing endure. Better yet, they take the form of real keepers in several instances.

Opener “O.F.Y.C. Showcase” is a nice, rowdy start that promptly informs us that the barreling sonic nihilism established on 2005’s Fall Heads Roll persists, and the malaise of the third track, “Mexico Wax Solvent,” is nicely mitigated by an intermittent and abnormally upbeat guitar lick.

But the real action starts with the fourth song, “Cowboy George,” in which a rollicking, spaghetti western-style guitar and galloping drums find unlikely partners in a Daft Punk-style vocoder and Smith’s misanthropic British ramblings.

A couple of tracks later, “Y.F.O.C. / Slippery Floor” starts off as a plodding, stultifying, bass-driven shuffle— the kind of seemingly endless ditty that’s popular in Purgatory and familiar to anyone who’s listened to more than a couple of Fall albums— before suddenly launching into a belligerent charge that’ll make you reflexively stand up and roundhouse kick your roommate through the wall.

For good measure, they throw in an obscure cover, righteously bleak-ified: the 1960’s country tune “Funnel of Love,” which I know only from an impeccable rockabilly mix tape that I got out of a discarded cardboard box full of cassettes.

Your Future slows down for the closer with “Weather Report 2,” a six-and-a-half minute downer in which Smith staggers through what sounds like some genuine twilight self-reflection, a disconcerting note to end on when viewed in the context of his wondering out loud, “When do I quit?” a couple of tracks earlier.

There are undoubtedly more than a few Fall fans out there wringing their hands over the prospect of Mark E. Smith hanging up his hat, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. For one, I’m thoroughly convinced that he can’t quit. But if I’m wrong, Your Future, Our Clutter would be far from a bad note to end on, preserving an honor that Smith and few others can claim, which is to have kept making music into old age without ever losing what made them great musicians.

If nothing else, I can remain calm in the knowledge that The Fall’s back catalog could keep me busy for a long time.

*Unavoidable alliteration. Sorry.