1987 happened to be only time that I ever saw The Fall and then I cannot say that I went out of my way to see them. It was at the Reading Festival and no prizes for guessing that I was there to see The Stranglers. The Fall played and I stayed to watch three or four songs and then left. With hindsight I wish I had stayed, listened closer and tried to get my head around that most unusual of bands.
Here's what Marl L. Sinkus of New Musical Express had to say of the gig in the issue of 23rd May.
THE FALLLONDON ASTORIA
So what is it about The Fall? No one else draws this strange goblin crowd, these people whose understanding isn’t determined by the way they look, who’d always vanish between the lines in a consumer research study. And they always come, and then make snidy comments – Smith’s fans are admirably cynical about the boy. But they still venerate him.
Fall-sound hasn’t changed much. It’s thickened, and the rhythm has sharpened till it shudders and dances. I’ll be provocative: The Fall are the closest we’re going to come to a Sly & The Family Stone, with their subtle portage of modern urban myth and their strangeness and directness. I’ll be more provocative: Smith is far less flaky than Sly, and 10 years seem like a tiny blip on his event horizon (four years is twice too long for most rock operations – but of course The Fall are Northern Soul… you can hear that can’t you?).
Have they run out of ideas? Have they become an institution? Get out of here! Can they break up and out of their present cycle? Will a Top 30 hit change the game. Take their grouchy genius out of their hands and plump it in the people’s?
We’ve stopped treating them as one among many groups. Their impress is unique, historically. Psychologically. Right. So what? Mark E’s devotion to his own imagination comes across as slouched truculence, and there’s still people that can’t get past that – but they’re still the only unit whose intelligence is broadcast in their sound, rather than the pre-publicity, or the lyric sheets, or the clothes. Brix has opened up their glamour; but because their focus is so fiercely aural, they remove themselves from the first level of Britain’s groggy class gane. For a while. For long enough, just long enough. Four encores. Wicked.
What’s next? Maybe they should write a song about me.
MARK L. SINK
Thanks to the original Dime uploader (twosheds).
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-x9eKDQZwu5
No comments:
Post a Comment