Mark E. Smith has been waiting his whole life to write "50 Year Old Man". It's the song he was born to sing, the song for which he's essentially spent an entire career spanning somewhere in the neighborhood of 26 studio albums rehearsing. Oh, he's written better songs-- loads of them-- but that's beside the point. This song, all 12 minutes of it, including the completely unexpected banjo solo, is basically Smith saying, "I'm old and I'm still playing in this warped, badass band making challenging music and fuck you if you think I'm going to stop." Never mind that 50 is hardly old these days, it's still glorious to hear him yelling, "I'm a 50-year-old man/ What're you gonna do about it." I expected him to tell younger bands to get off his lawn any minute.
Smith is backed on Imperial Wax Solvent by yet another line-up of the Fall-- the mostly American band that chipped in on last year's underwhelming Reformation Post TLC (the TLC stood for Traitors, Liars, Cunts, according to Smith) is out, replaced by a bunch of Brits who can really thrash in the best Fall tradition. That's what this band has become at this point-- it's more a tradition than a particular sound, and whoever steps in to fill the shoes of the last guys to leave gets to put his or her own spin on it. Smith's wife Eleni Poulou is still at the keyboards (she takes a lead vocal turn as well, on the twitchy "I've Been Duped", where the others chant behind her like cheering football supporters), and bassist Dave Spurr stays onboard, joined by new recruits Peter Greenway on guitar and Keiron Melling on drums.
Spurr is well-warmed to his role in the band now, and his weird, slippery bassline is the lead instrument on spooky opener "Alton Towers". It's a strange opener in that it's so subtle, but it's also quite effective as a lead track, drawing you in for the kill that "Wolf Kidult Man" delivers with its blistering guitar attack. Smith's vocals sound as slurred and irritated as ever, but he's clearly feeling refreshed after his American adventure (his musicians walked out on him and Poulou while they slept, forcing him to recruit the aforementioned Americans mid-tour), and he even has something of a foil on "Can Can Summer", as Poulou calmly inserts her own underplayed encouragement behind his declamatory spiel. The band supplies him with a handful of nice, evil riffs to work off of-- "Tommy Shooter" and "Taurig" are fantastic post-apocalyptic electro-punk and the punk-prog blast of "Is This New" seems designed to "reduce your knees to noodles," to borrow one of Smith's own lines from "Tommy Shooter".
While Imperial Wax Solvent has all the buzzy, crunchy sonic hallmarks of great Fall, it also doesn't quite rank with their highest highs, an admittedly tall order when that includes albums recorded twenty-five years ago by a completely different set of musicians. There are basically three quality tiers in the band's discography: classic Fall, good Fall and lost-the-plot-for-a-minute Fall, and this lands neatly in the second category, with none of the instant classic, teeth-cracking tracks that cover their best sides, but plenty of inspired ranting and rhythmic dexterity nonetheless. If nothing else, it makes clear that Smith is determined to keep charging into the new century at the helm of the Fall, and that can only be a good thing. I look forward to hearing "70 Year Old Man".
