The Fall has been one of the most loved, talked-about post-punk bands throughout its thirty-year run as a forum for Mark E. Smith's sarcasm and bile, but the longevity and prolific nature that's helped fuel their improbable run is also the very thing that makes them so imposing for new listeners. Two dozen studio albums alone is a bewildering assortment, forget all the live albums, EPs, singles, compilations, boxed sets, and bootlegs that are floating around. It's widely accepted that the highest of the band's several peaks occurred in the early-to-mid-80s, when the line-up was reasonably stable and the players were at the peaks of their respective powers.
I'm not here to challenge that assumption, because I happen to agree with it-- This Nation's Saving Grace, Perverted By Language, and Hex Enduction Hour are my three favorite Fall LPs. Nearly every phase of the band, however, has produced at least some interesting material, and they're all worth talking about. The Fall's three-album engagement with the Fontana label is one of the least-examined periods in the band's history, partly because the albums themselves have been sporadically available, and partly because the period marked a change in the band's music that many fans initially recoiled from.
All three albums, 1990's Extricate, 1991's Shift-Work, and 1992's Code: Selfish, have finally received the reissue treatment, complete with obligatory bonus discs-- more on those later-- and remastering. Extricate was actually the first Fall album I heard, on the radio of my old truck during high school, when a friend bought it on cassette from a department store cut-out bin as we drove home after seeing local bands at an Elks Club lodge. I can't even remember what I thought at the time, but it wasn't until college that I approached the band on my own, taking the more common route through This Nation's Saving Grace and the 458489 A-Sides compilation.
Coming back to this period through the lens of what went before and what came after, the music sounds different from archetypical Fall, but not so different that a genuine fan wouldn't find a lot to like. These albums still feature bassist Steve Hanley and guitarist Craig Scanlon, both holdovers from the classic era, and Simon Wolstencroft was well-ensconced behind the drums. So it's more a difference in approach and attitude that separates these albums from their predecessors. Mark E. Smith was coming off his divorce from his wife Brix, whose presence in the band had been a major shaping force in the latter half of the 80s.
Extricate, the first post-Brix album, is marked by a far more melodic approach than your usual Fall joint. It's also loaded up with keyboards, nods to techno, and, in an unexpected but welcome twist, Kenny Brady's textural violin playing. "Sing! Harpy" is as caustic and deadpan as anything in the Fall canon, riding a spare, brutal groove as Brady's scraping strings fills in the gaps. It seems as though his divorce is fresh on Smith's mind. "You know I why I hate you, baby?/ Because you make me hate you, baby," he sing-speaks on "Black Monk Theme Pt. 1", one of the band's many nods to 60s proto-punks the Monks. This immediately follows the sarcastic fake power ballad "Bill Is Dead", on which Smith sings, "this is the greatest time of my life," over and over while organs swell behind him. It's hardly perfect, and "Bill Is Dead" wears thin once the novelty wears off, but Extricate is a more integral Fall album than it's often given credit for.
They seem to be flagging a bit on much of Shift-Work, the very title of which could be taken to mean that their relentless pace was catching up to them. This is Smith's most prolonged flirtation with traditional singing-- the shockingly gentle "Edinburgh Man" isn't a prototype for the pop charts, but it draws as much of its staying power from Smith's melodic hook as it does from Scanlon's intravenous guitar or Scanlon's bassline. Elsewhere, actual backing harmonies populate the title track, and even songs with titles like "The War Against Intelligence" and "Book of Lies" don't have nearly the acerbic bite you might expect. Still, most of it works-- the album's principle problem is that it runs out of steam toward the end. Closer "Sinister Waltz" is godawful boring, and "Rose" is bleepy, sunny filler that feels out of place even on the cheeriest Fall album.
Code: Selfish features a lean line-up of Hanley, Scanlon, Smith and Wolstencroft, with some keyboard work from David Bush. It's nearly as good as Extricate, bringing the band's nasty edge back full force without returning outright to familiar territory. And unlike Shift-Work, C:S doesn't leave you wondering what you're in for after the first track-- "The Birmingham School of Business School" leads things right off with a crackling beat and a jumble of church bell samples, with a double-tracked MES slurring out a sour serenade over the top and wrestling with Scanlon's squirming leads. Hanley essentially plays a would-be sequencer part manually on his bass. Hanley and Scanlon interact with startling precision throughout, but their finest moment is "Two Face!" which pits Scanlon's clean-toned note clusters and ringing chords against a see-sawing Hanley grind.
"Everything Hurtz" has a cut-glass groove, with Wolstencroft masterfully controlling the song's momentum by switching up his beat. The single version is on the bonus disc. As one might imagine, the three bonus discs of these reissues present a widely varied and inconsistent mixture of b-sides, castaways, BBC recordings, and alternate versions. With nearly an hour of extras per album, the band's hardest-core obsessives-- most of their audience, come to think of it-- will have plenty to dig into. The BBC sessions (four tracks on each disc) are among the most valuable additions, but there are other gems, including the immortal "British People in Hot Weather", with its huge, sarcastic Caribbean keyboard hook and nasty funk groove, and "High Tension Line", which takes its title to heart in a its taut, wiry arrangement.
All told, this phase of the Fall's long and strange career is definitely worth exploring once you've become hooked on them, but it isn't a place to start. If you've been waiting for quality reissues of the albums, these versions give you a lot for your legal tender, scraping mostly gold from the seemingly endless pit of rare Fall material.
