Mark E’s by Gerald Jenkins

superblackmarket:

Mark E. Smith at Myron’s Ballroom, 1981

hippriestess:

The Fall’s Albums In No Order At All (Except There Kind Of Will Be An Order From Now On, I Suppose); No. 30 of 30(ish) - Re-mit

Owing very little sonically to “Imperial Wax Solvent” or “Your Future, Our Clutter”, “Re-mit” is, in effect, “Ersatz GB” done properly. Well, not *that* properly but I’ll come back to that in a bit.

The production veers from sparse to non-existant and several songs sound like live takes with just one of everything, no obvious overdubs or tinkering. Although Mark E Smith alone is named as producer, the sonic clarity is vastly improved from last time - every contribution tells rather than disappearing into the mid-fi murk of “EGB“. This is the making of several tracks, especially the fragile, crepuscular “Hittite Man” where Dave Spurr and Keiron Melling hold down a dark rumble while Pete Greenway’s spiky, piercing guitar notes are reminiscent of nothing more than “A Figure Walks” from “Dragnet”. The difference is that this figure walks through a clear, cold night rather than a deep fog and the impact is arresting. We can hear Smith rustling his lyric sheets - a nice audio-verite touch - and his wheezing at the conclusion of the track is genuinely dramatic. It’s brilliant. Elsewhere, Smith has plainly tired of covering The Monks and engages Tim Presley to come up with a new Monks song for him. The result is “Kinder Of Spine“ at which even a stone would smile - Smith is at his most growly here but he milks it for comic effect rather than mock terror and the result is a delight. Presley also contributes to knock-em-flat rocker “No Respects“ which gives the album both a startling introduction and a half-time lift.

It’s a particularly good one for the occasionally-maligned Spurr and Melling - the superb “Irish” rattles down the motorway on a fabulous rolling rhythm track which reminds this writer of “Old Brown Shoe” of all things and the bouncy paradiddles of “Jetplane” give Smith room for a priceless, multi-channel ramble on the vagaries of international travel. A similar vocal tactic lifts the otherwise slight “Victrola Time” but, d’you know what? It’s actually a plus to hear Smith really stepping up to the plate given his recent tendency to drift over the music at his leisure. “Loadstones” is a cracker and one possessed of a slight reggae-lilt which gives a ferocious group performance a lightness that is almost giddying. “Sir William Wray” is 3 minutes of The Fall at full tilt with Greenway and Eleni Poulou trading inter-crossing melody lines while an overloaded Smith vocalises by turns wordlessly, incomprehensibly and passionately. It’s really powerful stuff.

It’s not all good news. Unfortunately, the album also suffers from some of the same difficulties as “Ersatz GB”. Some tracks sound like a great demo, a rehearsal room recording that should have been worked on rather than been passed as it stood. The worst offender is “Jam Song” (yeah, I know, “Jam Song“! I guess after 30 albums, the group are finally allowed to start improvising, for Christ’s sake…). There is a funky motorik groove Wolstencroft would have been proud of in here and when the musicians find it, the track has real potential, especially when Poulou‘s electronics lock in. But it doesn’t last and, in the same way that it spluttered into life, it just falls apart rather than reaching a real ending or indeed any kind of climax. It has EGB’s problem of sounding like MES singing over a tape and taking up 5 minutes of a 40 minute album with something so loose has a deleterious effect on the whole. In fact, while we’re here, the sequence doesn’t work and makes the album feel a lot more disjointed than it should. An instrumental introduction did “This Nation’s Saving Grace” no harm but with tracks 4 and 6 also being brief doodles (the “pisstracks” as they are affectionately known), the album doesn’t start to cohere until we’re well into the second half. “Noise” is the problem incarnate - a nice repeating groove starts to make its way through and it’s certainly more interesting than a couple that made “YFOC”. But we’re left with a very live sounding 2 minute take with MES having a (light-hearted) pop at Greenway with a side mention for engineer Grant “Showbiz” Cunliffe. Yeah, I know, it’s a bit of fun  and that has its place but it’s also a poor use of something promising. I think we can assume studio time and money were as tight as usual but, properly gripped and developed, we could have had an album up there with “Imperial Wax Solvent”.

Such as it is, it looks like the New York Times were closest - they said “Better than “Ersatz GB”; far better than “Reformation Post TLC”; not as good as “Your Future Our Clutter” and a full mile worse than “Imperial Wax Solvent”“.I’ll come back to them about “YFOC” in a month or two but otherwise, spot on. C-Mac Rating - 8.0/10

carrybagman:

The Fall. Re-Mit. a few thoughts.

It’s a Fall album, it’s beyond criticism from me.

But this is a great album, from a very good group; a ten legged groove machine. And stands up against any other Fall album.

Here are a few things which occurred to me:

There are writing credits to Tim Presley on No Respects and Kinder of Spine. Writing credits on Fall albums are a bit of a lottery, which leads you to think that Tim Presley’s guitar work is on these tracks, which is odd, he was in the band 2006-2007. There almost seems to be a contractual agreement being filled here, and may explain why the album was n’t released in 2012. These 3 tracks are the most poppy on the album & the most like the Monks.

The version of Irish seems willfully under-produced. This track was a major part of the 2012 gigs, often as a show opener, where it was more powerful than on Re-Mit. Still, it’s got quite a bit of MES going, ‘brrrrrrrrrrrrrruhh’, which is good.

Noise, Pre-MDMA Years & Jam Song are all totally new to me. They seem like studio pieces, and are unlikely to be played live.

Victrola Time has been kicking around for a while, but fits in well.

What is Mark saying on Hittite Man? ‘death does not exist’ or ‘debt does not exist’ or both, or neither? Throughout there are little phrases which jump out from the songs.

Hittite Man, Victrola Time, Irish, Jetplane & Loadstones are my stand-out tracks.

‘Local,… Loadstones’.

The Fall’s Mark E. Smith on new album Re-Mit, playing for German lawyers and H.P. Lovecraft - interview

Mark E. & Marc R.

ambient-tanks:

MES