The Fall In The 21st Century

You need "My Ex-Classmates Kids" on the mix at the end, but otherwise- yeah. I can't think of a second act in R&R that compares. In some ways it's like a brilliant solo career after a brilliant band, since the 80s Fall was a band. But even later Fall records sound like a band, too. That reshaping is what's amazing. He's like a live-instrument DJ, shaping a style out of other's playing.

Well, "My Ex-Classmates Kids" and "I Wake Up In The City" share the exact same backing music, just different lyrics and I prefer the latter but they're both good.

Thanks for putting together the list of CD tracks like that, Mr. Odd.

I bought 2G+2 when it came out (while visiting record shops in Vancouver B.C. for the first time) and I believe I did so because they had played Seattle earlier that year and I hoped for the same kind of live guitar sound I had heard at the gig which was raw, very punk, quite good. I was disappointed in it and sold it.

Later I downloaded Real New Fall but it didn't particularly excite me. That's the only other album I know here.

I think I'm going to just try the new album soon and see if I like it.

In other news, I was actually reading my book The Fall by M.E.S. & Mick Middles on the bus this morning to work. There was an interesting story M.E.S. told in there of how his grandad took his dad out for a drink in a pub in December 1940 and his dad was all chuffed cause Grandad had never gone drinking with him before and then pretty soon Grandad got all upset that his son had joined up to fight the war, said he was only doing it to impress his girlfriend (M.E.S.'s mum) and stormed out after only an hour and then M.E.S.'s dad was upset and ran out after Grandad to just manage to catch the same bus as him. Well, soon after, the pub they'd been in was blown up by the Germans. M.E.S. said "if me grandad hadn't been the bastard he was [to dad], I never would have been here."

Top job, can't fault this list.

Perhaps add a couple of tracks from the Elf Fork Elopement EP and it's perfect.

i've got some catching up to do. mind you, with the fall, who hasn't? certainly, this distillation makes it a bit easier.

off to see if emusic has the new one: i've heard enough about it to convince me it's a goer.

(for some reason i'm not going to see them in glasgow tonight. hmm. just not in the mood, and have other plans anyway.)

emusic doesn't. but it does have the unutterable, which i don't. about to rectify that, anyway.

The best I'd say, in order, would be: Unutterable, Missing Winner, Imperial Wax, Von Sudenfed, and Real New Fall. I don't really count 2G+2 and Interim as real albums, but the former is much better than the latter.

There's a passable 14 track album if you grab the best from Heads Roll and Reformation, but I still believe that those two albums are the most musically uninspired the band has ever been. As for Mr. Odd's picks, I'd drop Pacifying Joint, Assume, Bo Demmick, Youwanner, and Systematic Abuse. Throw in The Wright Stuff, White Line Fever, Breaking The Rules, and a couple of Von Sudenfed tracks instead.

So are we gonna get a new Fall album this year or not?

I was talking to a friend the other day about just this very subject. I reckon not. Although Fall albums are relatively frequent, even these days, they narrative of their appearance tends to be laborious in the extreme, usually following something like this process -

1) New more or less wordless songs appear live (much less rapidly than in bygone times).

2) Rumours of a new album appear - ie Smith has shot his mouth off saying that they've been in the studio for an album that should appear in [insert entirely fictional date]

3) Release date for actual album is announced.

4) Album is entirely re-recorded.

5) Production wrangles.

6) New album date is announced.

7) Album appears about a month or two after that.

And no doubt much else besides. I'd be surprised if we saw something this year and wouldn't be surprised if it was as late as Easter next.

So the list at the top of this thread still stands.

The a-grade stuff for me is The Unutterable, The Real New Fall LP and Are You Are Missing Winner.

Imperial Wax Solvent is the best of the rest and a great relief after the imaginative poverty of Fall Heads Roll and Post TLC: Reformation! (Although both of these have their moments, and the Reformation line up was incredible live.) The songs feel very lightweight and as if the lyrics don't really belong anywhere.

Smith used to say that one of the ways he wrote songs was off the lyric, but now it sounds like he gets the group to record some tunes and then just fits some disparate stuff he's written on top. Imperial Wax Solvent was an improvement in that respect, but did feel slightly synthetic, and for the first time ever, I don't think there were any tracks on it that would enter my 'classic Fall' category, although 50-Year-Old Man comes close. Live, again, they've often been superb recently.

They signed to Domino records I believe.

Here it is:

09/04/09
Domino are proud to announce that we will be working with one of the uk’s most singular and legendary talents – The Fall. The group will be entering the studio imminently, somewhere in the north of England to record an album, their first recordings for the label. There are no firm release plans as yet but towards the end of 2009 is a strong possibility

Yep. And here's the early fictional date mention.

http://thequietus.com/articles/01427-the-fall-s-nex-album-will-be-on-domino

June!

don't think there were any tracks on it that would enter my 'classic Fall' category,

"I've Been Duped" is crying in the corner because of you ;)

i could have sworn i walked into a record store and looked at a new fall release the other day. maybe i imagined it.

which is the modern-days album that opens with the bass-loop track with MES mentioning 'the spawn of l. laverne / and james loaded brown'?

Imperial Wax Solvent. The track you speak of is the excellent Alton Towers, it has the best lyrics of any Fall song for a few years at least -

Graves, decline in excelsis.
And the wraiths, through the slits in San Rocco,
look very different.
And are no longer any way sublime.
How to get out?
How to get stay thin?
The spawn of J Loaded Brown and the 11 crawl around.
The crows look very different today.
And the crows are not reflecting any form of quality, at all.

I've Been Duped may be crying, but it cries better live than on the album, I think,

http://visi.com/fall/news/fallnews.html

Smith via Mojo claims new album Our Future - Your Clutter out in November. I'll believe it when I see it. But here's hoping.

But even later Fall records sound like a band, too. That reshaping is what's amazing. He's like a live-instrument DJ, shaping a style out of other's playing.

This is indeed one of the most astonishing things about MES and the only analogous example I can think of is (electric-era) Miles.

i know i posted this on a different thread but i gotta stand up for 21st-century Fall, especially new discovery 'the unutterable' and real new fall lp

ketamine fucking sun was too late for my 23 songs but it'd be damn close.

Strongly recommend the February 12th Berlin Maria am Ostbanhof gig (available on dime) - just incredible, one of the best live recordings I've heard of them for a long while.

Has anyone heard the new album? I think it might be a masterpiece, frankly.

They've had time (for the first time for a long time) to polish it...

Have you heard it, Jouster? I think I'm going to hold out for the actual release this time around, but if that's a review, it's the sort of review I like, not giving anything away, but whetting the apetite perfectly!

Best Fall album title in awhile

I have! I will say no more, though, so as not to spoil it.

Feels like the stars are in alignment for this one somehow. I'm more excited for a Fall album than I have been in a long while.

In case anyone hasn't seen it yet, this is the best Fuck Yeah Tumblog ever: http://fuckyeahthefall.tumblr.com/

The MES appearance on the new Gorillaz album ("Glitter Freeze") is lame - he's there for maybe 10 seconds.

I was trying to listen out for him and totally missed it, not realizing that he'd been and gone until Lou Reed popped up.

sooooo psyched for this record - their first since i became obsessed with them

The MES appearance on the new Gorillaz album ("Glitter Freeze") is lame - he's there for maybe 10 seconds.

I was also bitterly disappointed by this. The weird thing is that track sounds like something that could have come off The Unutterable or The Marshall Suite.

So the music's good but the vocals non-existant?

I'd love to hear Albarn's version of Dr Buck's Letter.

"A platinum Amadou and Miriam AmEx Card. They didn't make a fuss about giving it to me..." *starts laughing*

happy birthday MES!

Here's your birthday horoscope, courtesy of Holiday Mathis:

TODAY'S BIRTHDAY (March 5). You are invigorated by ideas. This year brings a few bright ones right out of the gate. You'll find yourself following a new trajectory, as your belief in an idea leads to adventure. You'll love the partner in invention and mischief introduced to you in May. July heals a relationship. Finances improve in September. Gemini and Scorpio people adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 35, 15, 30, 10 and 8.

"Gemini and Scorpio people adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 35, 15, 30, 10 and 8."

That's pretty much the lyrics to Senior Twilight Stock Replacer.

couple new tracks here:

http://sites.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/em/cestlenoir/playlists.php

march 3 episode they are at the beginning

'mexico wax solvent' (the second one they play) is AWESOME

http://imgs.inkfrog.com/pix/tanachs/2010-02-17Bunny-2-23.jpg

Amazing, but I'd be afraid of looking like "that guy in a JD shirt" to the uninitiated.

hahaha i would wear the shit out of that shirt!

i'm getting excited for this.

Your Future Our Clutter: THE FALL 2010 Chop-Licking and Thub-Twiddling Thread

Any word on a new album or MES project?