Given the sheer volume of music Mark E. Smith left behind when he passed away in 2018, approaching The Fall's back catalogue can seem a daunting task for the uninitiated. Thankfully, MOJO's resident Fall fachmann Ian Harrison has trawled through the group's 31 studio albums to select ten of the band's finest moments...
1.
Industrial Estate
(from Live At The Witch Trials, 1979)
Poetically-illuminated, scraping northern English punk gravel about the indignity of labour. Why he’s saying “yeah, yeah”? The sound of rubbish in bracken, glimpsed through wire fences.
2.
Fiery Jack
(from Totale’s Turns, 1979)
Medieval demon-gargoyle meets speeding alco-rockabilly, amid the slathering-on of deep heat treatment. “I’m not going back to the slow life,” sings MES, who never did.
3.
I’m Into C.B.
(B-side to Look, Know, 1982)
Smith’s vividly drawn psycho herbert wastes grim life (“my step-sister’s got a horrible growth”) on the internet of the ’80s, over the trebliest guitar of the trebliest decade.
4.
Australians In Europe
(B-side to Hit The North, 1987)
One of a glut of exceptional ‘80s B-sides (see above); streamlined Route One motorik-ramalam, bespoke invective, heavily reverbed whooping... Ace.
5.
Bremen Nacht
(from The Frenz Experiment, 1988)
Fatal historical vibrations burst into the present, furiously, on tour in West Germany. Steve Hanley hated playing the bassline because it was so physically demanding.
6.
New Big Prinz
(from I Am Kurious Oranj, 1988)
“Check the guy’s track record!” The hip priest borrows from his own back catalogue, and proves how a kind of mantric skiffle can have genuine insidious menace.
7.
Rose
(from Shift-Work, 1991)
Max-wistful sequel to 1990’s Bill Is Dead, Smith addressing an ex-partner (Brix?) with dreamy equanimity: “I hear you are in Hampstead / I hope you
can get married”.
8.
Blindness
(John Peel Session, 2004)
MES stitches then-Home Secretary David Blunkett, secret rites and the Via Dolorosa into a remorseless juggernaut à la *Locust Abortion Technician-Butthole Surfers.
9.
The Rhinohead
(Von Südenfed single, 2007)
One final ‘pop’ crossover, as a hook-up with German techno auteurs Mouse On Mars, under the *nom de guerre Von Südenfed, produces this industrialised Motown stomper.
10.
Fol De Rol
(from New Facts Emerge, 2017)
Simultaneously more focused and less comprehensible than ever, this metallic pavement slab-chucker finds MES goading the village witch-burners and invoking “Homeric cogs of steel.” Sublime.