Insufficiently Adored '80s Records Pt III: The Fall Edition
The previous installments in this incredibly vital and important series are here and here. The future ones are in my mind and in my car (we can’t rewind, we’ve gone too far). This time, it’s all records by the Fall, who I mentioned at the end of my last post (by the way, I’ve updated the ordering links there for lazenby’s book because I forgot signed copies were available).
If you have a passing familiarity with post-punk, you already know about the Fall in a general way — a band with a million period styles, held together by the acerbic sensibilities of lead singer Mark E. Smith, who sounds always as though he were singing through a barrage of facial tics while swallowing a mouthful of particularly unpleasant porridge — and you already probably know that their most acclaimed albums from the Thatcher-Reagan era are Hex Enduction Hour (1982) and This Nation’s Saving Grace (1985), followed probably by The Wonderful and Frightening World Of … (1984). The former is sludgy, thick, paranoid, and incredibly rich; the latter two are a bit poppier and easier to listen to but equally brilliant. I’ve been listening to the Fall a lot lately and I don’t think consensus is just to the following records. You must get them all, as John Peel famously said, and though that’s hyperbole (I don’t think even Mark E. got them all), it’s closer to best practices than just trying to reduce them to Hex Enduction and Saving Grace.