The Fall - Reformation Post TLC

The Poet of Prestwich continues undiminished into 30th year

The musical history of Salford’s most dogged and inscrutable son, Mark E Smith, had become so tightly interwoven with John Peel’s that there was an almost casual assumption in some quarters that The Fall would grind to a halt after his death. Rather than being a grieving widower following his wife to the grave a handful of months later, however, the sad absence of the last radio DJ who would actually play their music has coincided with The Fall enjoying a period of rude health. Creatively, they have been on an upward swing for a good few years now, with some of the worst effects of binge drinking and bankruptcy gradually becoming a thing of the past, and razor-sharp singles such as Theme From Sparta FC pointing the way forward.

After 2005’s Fall Heads Roll, a scrappy but hook-heavy and, more importantly, youthful-sounding effort, things were almost on an even keel. Then the all-too-predictable happened; Smith and wife Elena (keyboards) were left stranded in the Phoenix desert half way through a US tour by the rest of his disgruntled band. This, somehow, has ended up working in Smith’s favour, as he promptly recruited three tightly-drilled, young, LA-based Krautrock fans – Tim Presley (guitar), Rob Barbato (bass) and Orpheo McCord (drums), who have stoked the band’s fires for a second time in as many years. Album opener Over! Over!, with its looping refrain, ‘I think it’s over now, I think it’s beginning’ possibly uses the metaphor of the seven-year itch to look at the revolving door recruitment policy of his group. Reformation!, a one-note, locked-down groove with clanging Can guitar strafes and slowly-building space-rock synth washes, calls to mind the group at their most austere. The insistent, pared-down grooves and acres of space on this album recall Hex Enduction Hour, apart from the fact that Smith actually not only sounds chipper here, but he occasionally seems positively jovial. During Insult Song, Smith can barely keep a straight face as he recounts how, when he first saw the new band members, he thought they were wearing masks until he got up close. ‘They took the trout replica thing a bit too far’, he guffaws.

There’s no Touch Sensitive or High-Tension Line; just a fan’s album, pure and simple. So, we have a relatively obscure and ramshackle cover (Merle Haggard’s White Line Fever), the missus doing a turn (The Wright Stuff) and a completely deranged, experimental lo-fi-dub-punk-electronica epic about a submarine (Das Boat). It’s true to say that Reformation (a typically E Smithian dig at the number of groups who reform for the money) isn’t going to win or lose them any fans but, after approximately 25 studio albums, twice as many singles, and twice as many compilations and live albums, one thing is sure: that certainly wasn’t the intention to begin with.

Sanctuary | SLOPR 007

Reviewed by John Doran
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