January is always a hard time of year for me, it isn’t a lovable month anyway and I always breathe a sigh of relief when my birthday comes around to mark the end of it.
With nothing but a slate grey sky overhead all day, yesterday was one of those days that just seems never to have been born, laying down the ‘die’ in per diem. Working hard all day with cold hands* I wanted to find something to mirror my mood and my surroundings; caustic, inhospitable, angular, bitter.
The Fall Slates was the only real candidate.
The 1981 fourth album that wasn’t**, Slates is a prized nugget amongst the Fall-en. True believers cherish the hostility and obtuseness of it, the total lack of any attempt to ingratiate itself with the listener. You could say that in a hugely uncompromising discography Slates is the uncompromisingly-est moster.
I am not a true Fall believer, I’m just a dabbler; one of those despised milquetoast types who liked the Fall best when they’re playing at being a pop band with menaces, something they were occasionally brilliant at. Far from finding solid solidarity in Slates over the last couple of days it has repelled me, magnetically speaking, but that is kinda the point.
The line-up that recorded Slates is a pretty revered one in Fall circles – that is saying something for a band who in 2008 had 45 ex-members^. Marc Riley, Steve and Paul Hanley, Craig Scanlon made a great core group, capable of driving the music very rhythmically and equally taking it for some pretty weird detours. Your basic standard off-the-shelf Dadaist rockabilly outfit.
Wade in past the cover, with its live shot of the band, turned sideways obvs and its’ roll call of attractions ending with the injunction to ‘cost: Two pounds only, u skinny rats’, note that the two record sides are labelled subjective and objective and you’re already on the hard stuff.
Actually play the thing and you cross through into the phantom zone proper. Tracks like ‘Middle Mass’ just rattle past trailing nothing but serrated edges for the casual listener to try and grip hold of. ‘Prole Art Threat’ ditto. This stuff hurts.
It is all a bit too much for me, I latch onto the slower, nasty ‘An Older Lover Etc.’ widely interpreted to be a dig at (then) manager/lover Kay Carroll over a creeping, creepy guitar line and great bass, as Smith unkindly lays out why monogamy with an older lover is difficult.
You'd better take a younger lover You'll miss your older lover Her love was like your Mother's With added attractions
Quite. Kay Carroll, 11 years older than Smith, was not amused; I’m on her side.
‘Fit And Working Again’ is jauntier, as befits a song touching on suicide and British boxer Alan Minter taking LSD^*. Then ‘Slates, Slags Etc’ just goes full-on opaque – good luck decoding this plodding, two-chorder^^; I like it.
The vitriol spewing ‘Leave The Capitol’ is straighter-forwardian, MES giving his jaundiced views on London (which align with mine) over a great tune. Yes, an actual tune! You lucky skinny rats! And all for £2.
Slates is a thing. It does a very specific job for me, on occasion but I wouldn’t want to live in it. As always the band are clever, minimal, warped and MES just blazes.
Slates = very hos-TILE; how’s that for an elliptical Fall-type pun(gent)?
My copy of Slates is a very nice US 2016 reissue, complete with great insert/liner notes by Brian Turner. It is a better quality release and pressing than the original was, I’d recommend.
1048 Down.
*slaving over a keyboard, this isn’t some kind of Springsteen, workin’ on the highway type trip.
**a 10″ EP, Slates wasn’t the LP the label wanted and it wasn’t a single they could sell either. It didn’t fit either metric and in Mark E Smith’s telling Rough Trade decided to put their resources into a more compliant bunch of lads from Manchester led by a be-quiffinated narcissist and cut their losses with the Fall.
^I cannot recommend Dave Simpson’s book The Fallen, in which he tracks down and interviews each and every one of them, or tries to, enough. An angry Mark E Smith’s cover quote? ‘I just fucking burned it!’.
^*Minter who lost to, my favourite fighter ever, Marvin Hagler after saying ‘That black man is not going to take my title away’.
^^may I point the curious to the SUPERB website The Annotated Fall for thousands of words of discussion on this one song. Be careful, it isn’t for the culturally uninitiated.
Upbeat Bday Joe, Belated that is. Continuously cool when you get a reissue and it’s superior to the first.
Thanks Stefan! Discogs is full of folks moaning about reissue quality but my view is that many are superior, especially to 80’s releases because such little care was taken over vinyl then.
Footnote, on annotatedfall.doomby.com: “Be careful, it isn’t for the culturally uninitiated.” Surely that’s exactly who it’s for!
I couldn’t agree more!
CB “The Dabbler”. I’m using that. Perfect word for my listening of a few bands including the Fall.
It’s a nice gentle word.
It has a ‘Dickens’ feel.
Yeah, he was no 1537 though.
You are funny.
Every time I think of the Fall, I think of Henry Rollins (he’s a huge fan, always talking about them, among others of course). I’ve never gone into their discography because I fear it might be a slippery, expensive slope.
Of course he is, he’s not afraid of anything!
They are such a regional band, I have had to have so much of their lyrics explained to me by friends from Manchester – I am just baffled by anyone from another country being able to understand a note of theirs.
Rollins goes deep on music (globally), though, makes sense he’d be into it! I need a good primer album/hits disc for a taste, maybe. Though from the sounds of it, that may be too disjointed to be of any use?
Yup, if you ever see the ‘Greatest Hits’ (I use the term ironically), that’s the best bet – some cracking tunes on there.
Awesome. Thanks!
I had their second album “Dragnet” but I never really got warm with The Fall.
They are amazing in places, I think but really hard going in others. I like their more tuneful stuff better, around ‘Extricate’ and ‘Shiftwork’.
Oh nice, I think about the fall and then go with JCC instead, one day I will make the leap, I haven’t got lost enough although with the current situation it may be good to vent some spleen. You are two days before me burp day wise, good luck.
You must have seen them live, surely?
I was at Deeply Vale when they were. I have to admit I don’t remember as I was 13 I think and a little overwhelmed shall we say. I am sure I have been in the room with MES performing many times, my behavior at gigs was not always conducive to memory in the past, I feel a post coming on gigs I was at and don’t remember.
https://youtu.be/p3j8JDM9m-A
I’d love to read that. There’s a great story about John Cooper Clarke who was asked by a mate if he’d ever met Tom Waits (who Clarke is a big fan of) and very sadly, he hadn’t. Until his mate found pictures of JCC and Tom getting pissed at a party together.
Haven’t quite made it to the dabbling phase yet, Joe. After purchasing, selling on, then repurchasing (I thought*) Welcome to the Wonderful and Frightening World of… I kind of lost momentum. But the truly wonderful “die’ in per diem” is almost enough to have me attempting reengagement, even though I cannot say I expect to fall for MES.**
* It was, I discovered on arrival home, the compilation “The Wonderful and Frightening Escape Route to The Fall”. Bastards.
** Not pun-gent, just smelly
Hey Bruce, they are so parochial a band, not just in terms of the UK but regionally – I only understand a lot of the bits I do via friends from Manchester who were very into them, that I am astonished that anyone from outside the NW of England can understand a word, let alone anyone from other climes.
Occasionally, they touched on something rare and amazing, other times they were an abrasive din. I’ll take that in January.
MES once stood next to me at a Godspeed You! Black Emporer gig at Planet K in Manchester. I plucked up the courage to nod at him at the end and he smiled. Apparently Johnny Marr was stood on the other side of me but I didn’t recognise him.
Spring’s on its way. Slate grey will give way to evergreen. I know this because it happens without fail each year! (No seer am I). Sometimes though, it’s good to down a shot of cheap whiskey to make you pull that face – then you know things can only get better.
The Fall are like that for me, more like a shot of drain-o, or a doughnut with glass sprinkles. This album is like both served up with a line of chopped up oven cleaner.
‘Scour away all wank stains with MES all new line-up Fallo-pads!’
Scrub away boi, scrub away. Spring cleaning is soon upon us.
I love you Mr Abrasive. The Fall taste like cheap cherry brandy to me, regrettable.
Happy Bday Joe..Belated that is. Always cool when you get an reissue and its better than the original.
Not my birthday until the 31st Deke, but thanks – I’ll keep it on ice!!
Gotcha! lol
Sounds really hard to listen to and awkward. I’m downloading it!
Proper January!