The Fall / The Brix Years 1983 - 1989

The Fall

For being one of the most prolific bands in history (kind of like the indie equivalent of The Grateful Dead), the period when Mark E. Smith found love and got married was also their best. Brix E. Smith brought a new pop sensibility to The Fall from throughout the 1980's. These are definitely my favorite albums by The Fall. I hope you enjoy.

The Fall / Perverted by Language
Released 1983

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Punk may have been the initial spark for the Fall, but by 1983 they had made it clear that whatever trend was next was not for them. Brix Smith made her debut with the band on Perverted by Language, helping to introduce the slightly more pop-friendly era of the group with another fine album. She takes lead vocals at various points throughout, notably "Hotel Bloedel," while her husband plays violin and adds extra spoken word thoughts along the way. The hints of strange beauty that the Fall can sometimes let into its world appear here more than once -- whether it's Brix's influence or not isn't clear, and why not? "Garden" still hits hard while using a softer chime at its heart, while "Hexen Definitive" is almost a country (and western) stroll. Even for all the slightly more accessible touches for a wider audience, the Fall remain the Fall. "Smile" shows the band's abilities at tense audio drama excellently, a relentless, steady build with the Steve and Paul Hanley and Karl Burns rhythm section leading the way, winding up to a total explosion that never comes. Smith's increasingly frenetic vocals match the looming dread of the track to a T. "Neighbourhood of Infinity," notable for its appearance on Palace of Swords Reversed, crops up here in a studio take, again a sequel of sorts to "The Man Whose Head Expanded." Musically it hits its own stride, another of the many motorik-tinged tunes that helped give the Fall its own particular edge ("I Feel Voxish" also fills that bill, and quite well at that). "Eat Y'Self Fitter," touching on everything from meeting heroes (maybe) to returning late rental videos, makes for a great start to things, an endlessly cycling rockabilly chug with extra keyboard oddities and sudden music-less exchanges for the chorus. - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

The Fall / Wonderful and Frightening World Of
Released 1984

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The Fall made the leap to a semi-major label -- Beggars Banquet -- with The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall, hooking up with noted producer John Leckie to create another smart, varied album. Contemporaneous with the slightly friendlier "Oh! Brother" and "C.R.E.E.P." singles without actually including them, Wonderful and Frightening World makes few concessions to the larger market -- every potential hook seemed spiked with the band's usual rough take-it-or-leave-it stance. Mark E. Smith's audible, tape-distorting spit on the descending chord blast of "Elves" -- already spiked with enough vocal craziness as it is -- gives a sense of where the album as a whole aims. Brix Smith co-writes about half the tracks, creating a strong partnership with many highlights. It may start with a semi-low-key chant, but when "Lay of the Land" fully kicks in, it does just that, Craig Scanlon in particular pouring on the feedback at the end over the clattering din. Smith sounds as coruscating and side-splittingly hilarious as ever, depicting modern Britain with an eye for the absurdities and failures (and crucially, no empathy -- it's all about a gimlet eye projected at everyone and everything). Two further standouts appear on the second half -- "Slang King," a snarling portrayal of a cool-in-his-mind dude and his increasingly pathetic life, and the concluding "Disney's Dream Debased." Though unquestionably the most conventionally attractive tune on the album, ringing guitars and all, Smith's lyrics portray a Disneyland scenario in hell, however softly delivered. Elsewhere, Gavin Friday from the Virgin Prunes takes a bow with his own unmistakable, spindly vocals on the trebly Krautrock chug of "Copped It" and the slightly more brute rhythm of "Stephen Song." [The CD version, in an admirable move by Beggars Banquet, contains seven extra tracks to fill the disc out, including "Oh! Brother" and "C.R.E.E.P.," along with associated B-sides and the Call for Escape Route EP.] - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

The Fall / This Nation's Saving Grace
Released 1985

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"Feel the wrath of my Bombast!" exhorts Smith on this follow-up to their groundbreaking Wonderful and Frightening World of... the Fall, and this collection is ample proof of the pure confidence the group had at this time. Stompers like "Barmy," "What You Need," and the mighty "Gut of the Quantifier" are all led by Brix Smith's twanging lead hooks, filled by distorted guitars and bludgeoning drums, on top of which Smith rants with conviction. But it's the departures from this sound that mark the real interest here: The synth-driven "L.A." looks ahead to the Fall's experiments with electronica; "Paint Work" is an impressionist piece interrupted by Smith accidentally erasing over some of the track at home; and "I Am Damo Suzuki," a tribute to Can's lead singer, which borrows its arrangement from several of that group's songs. The Fall sound mysterious, down-to-earth, and hilarious all at the same time. The CD reissue adds the singles "Cruiser's Creek" and "Couldn't Get Ahead" as well as their B-sides making this an essential purchase. - Ted Mills, All Music Guide

The Fall / Bend Sinister
Released 1986

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Again working with John Leckie on production, the Fall's third Beggars album, Bend Sinister, was a distinctly down affair -- not that the Fall were ever a shiny happy band, of course, but both music and lyrics seemed like a darker corner to dwell in. Happily there was no worry that the Fall would ever go goth; one suspects Mark E. Smith would rather have his tongue removed. Still, opening track "R.O.D." makes for a distinctly lower-key start in comparison to recent leadoffs like "Lay of the Land" and "Bombast," almost sounding a bit like fellow Mancunian legends Joy Division, Smith's lyric his own depressing vision of a beast slouching toward Bethlehem. Leckie's production emphasizes space in the recording, while the band as a whole sounds generally more deliberate and understated, even Craig Scanlon's guitar not leaping quite as much to trebly life as is normally the case. Songs like "Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers" favor Steve Hanley's bass work as much as anything, while the almost industrial/hip-hop beat of "US 80's-90's" sets the tone for a glowering vision of the States from, as Smith puts it, "the big-shot original rapper." Elsewhere, there's Smith's vision of the eternal outsider comes to life once again -- "Shoulder Pads 1," a hardly disguised sneer against being surrounded by people who "can't tell Lou Reed from Doug Yule," for all that there's a slightly quirky arrangement thanks to Simon Rogers' keyboards. Still, there are certainly moments of sheer fun -- in keeping with the band's regular ear for good cover versions, this time around psych-era obscurities the Other Half get the nod with a brisk rip through the obvious drug references of "Mr. Pharmacist." Brix again shares vocal leads with Smith at various points, notably "Dktr. Faustus," a distinctly reworked version of that particular legend that turns into a frantic, audibly unhappy dance groove. - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

The Fall / The Frenz Experiment
Released 1988

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After the dark morass of Bend Sinister, the sound of 1988's Frenz Experiment comes as a bit of a shock. The arrangements are spare and broken down to the essentials, with the distorted guitars brought down low and Wolstencroft's drums high in the mix. Marcia Schofield had also joined the band to add keyboards. With most of the songs credited only to Smith himself, this could be seen as a solo album of sorts, or an indication of some rift within the group -- it certainly doesn't translate into the music. For the first time too, his vocals are loud and clear, though certainly not comprehensible; "Bremen Nacht" hints at some sort of run in with a ghost in Germany, "Athlete Cured," with its Spinal Tap-borrowed riff, tells of a "German athletic star" made ill from unusual circumstances -- the narrative turns strange, then funny until wandering off, a classic Smith tactic. Their cover of the Kinks' "Victoria" marked the Fall's first entry into the British charts, but also fit in with Smith's continuing explorations of Britain's history and how it translates into issues of class identity. The CD contains their other two singles from this time -- "Hit the North" and a cover of R. Dean Taylor's "There's a Ghost in My House," which the group makes their own -- plus several B-sides. - Ted Mills, All Music Guide

The Fall / I Am Kurious Oranj
Released 1988

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The last thing most Fall fans expected the group to do in 1988 was provide music for a ballet, but in fact this is what they did. Of course, it helped that the Michael Clark company of dancers were some of the most avant-garde at the time in Britain and were inspired originally by the Fall's "Hey! Luciani" single. The concept, very loosely, centers around William and Mary of Orange, and finds Smith arranging William Blake's "Jerusalem" for the band, adding his own lyrics ("It was the fault of the government," providing ironic contrast to the self-sufficiency espoused in Blake). As a cohesive Fall album it fails: The strongest tracks are those that have little to do with the ballet (and are available elsewhere). "New Big Prinz" updates their own "Hip Priest" into one of their heaviest tracks, full of threat and wonder. "Cab It Up!" features all forward momentum and jingling keyboards. For the first time tracks felt like filler, and indeed they were. The CD booklet contains photographs from the performance full of giant pop-art hamburgers and cans of baked beans, suggesting I Am Kurios Oranj would have been more interesting to see than hear. - Ted Mills

The Fall / Seminal Live
Recorded 1988 - 1989

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The Fall's contractual obligation album. With Brix leaving (or left, depending on your history) the group, this is a hastily assembled selection of what sound like Frenz Experiment outtakes and nine live tracks, their last for Beggars Banquet. These opening five tracks would have made a nice EP supporting the single "Deadbeat Descendant," the first song featured on the album. They're not among their best, but "H.O.W. (History of the World)" has a certain grim stateliness to it, with a grungy bassline by Hanley leading the group. "Pinball Machine" continues in Smith's long line of rockabilly covers. The remaining live tracks are competent and follow their studio counterparts well enough, but nothing more. - Ted Mills, All Music Guide

The Fall / I Am As Pure As Oranj
Recorded 1988

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This is a bootleg-level release (supposedly given the OK by the Fall's former guitarist, Steve Hanley) of an August 1988 Fall concert in Edinburgh, Scotland, during which the Fall were accompanied by the Royal Dutch Ballet. Perhaps the visual component added some interest to the show, but on its own, I Am as Pure as Oranj is merely a warts-and-all document of an OK but not particularly brilliant late-'80s concert by a group that was capable of both much better and much worse. The ballet dancers were probably used to good effect on the extended versions of "Hip Priest," "Kurious Oranj," and "Jerusalem" (all of them well over six minutes, the first nearly seven and a half), but on their own, they sound like plodding, uninspired jams without even Mark E. Smith's usual acid-tongued ranting to sustain interest. The sound quality is OK, but only the most die-hard purists will be interested. - Stewart Mason, All Music Guide

The Fall / Oswald Defense Lawyer
Releaed 1996

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(editor's note - while definitely not one of their best releases, it does have some interesting artifcats from the "Brix" era)

The third of the Receiver compilations consisting of live tracks and outtakes, this disc has a little more cohesion than the others, keeping in with one era of the Fall -- the Frenz Experiment tour, it seems -- and leaving all the tracks live (or at least live in the studio). Possibly one outcome of listening to these uninspiring run-throughs is an appreciation of the sound any producer has brought to the Fall. "Bremen Nacht" and "Big New Prinz," so devastating on record, sound tinny and shambolic here. Like on the other Receiver comps, the authenticity of the "live" tracks are debatable and the whole enterprise feels like some barely legal bootleg. - All Music Guide