chiasm
THE FALL: LEADING OFF
posted Mon, 06-06-05
"Anthemic" wouldn't be the first word I'd use to describe The Fall's oeuvre - probably not in the top 20, really.
But - like many other bands - they are not at all above using the leadoff slot to just 'get on base' with a reliably rousing rockah. In honor of Monday [ed: this post was supposed to have gone up this morning], allow me to allow MES to kickstart your week with two old- and two new-school openers:
THE FALL - LAY OF THE LAND, kicking off the must-have 1984 album The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall, lyrics here. Amazing and dramatic start to this awesome album - the band + Brix ominously, even GOTHILY incanting "LAY, LAY, LAY!," then Mark, sounding like a zombie: "ARMA-GEDDON / THIS BEAUTIFUL TREE" OMG WTF, Christ! The drums come in way faster than you are expecting, which is one of the most infallibly awesome plays in the book, and the way the drums come back in sooner than you think in the chorus is a great detail that gives you the pleasurable feeling of being pulled back into the verse, like Scorpion-style "GET OVER HERE" shit. Paul Hanley on skins!
THE FALL - TOUCH SENSITIVE, from The Marshall Suite, lyrics here. Crowd pleaser, sooooo rousing - HEY HEY HEY! Perfectly condensed MES misanthropia: "an encounter on the street / if you smile you are a creep", plus a verse about trying to take a piss behind a tree and getting busted by a "star wars police vehicle." The strings are somewhat unfortunate and pervade the album, but they're pretty ignorable.
THE FALL - D.I.Y. MEAT, from 1996's The Light User Syndrome aka my favorite Fall album, lyrics here. LUS is the Fall's best-produced album, one of their longest, and it has some really startlingly weird/inventive/awesome songs. But it kicks off relatively straightforwardly, with this, D.I.Y. MEAT - laying down a rock solid, propulsive groove, then gracefully sliding into a chorus with an uncharacteristically soaring, shimmering synth line and a warm-yet-subtle melodic hook - and MES somehow making "he was a handyman!" sound anthemic.
Also noteworthy: cackles @ 1:30, what a sound! MES is an amazing vocalist, and extraordinarily creative with the way he uses his gift - not only did he essentially define the art of talk-singing (there is a German word for this, music hummers help me out!) for the indie rock milieu, and not only did he create an entirely new way of pronouncing the English language that has somehow become a legitimate style of pronounciation for others to imitate, but he routinely pulls out great non-singing vocalizations like this or manipulates his voice to produce amazing effects.
More later tonite (maybe). I SHOULD NOTE, why not here, that while the Fall Lyrics Paraders deserve to be sainted for keeping up with The Fall's 40 albums' worth of lyrics, these lyrics shouldn't necessarily be considered definitive. I've definitely heard lines that seemed pretty clearly different from their transcriptions there, to my ear at least - so, mileage may vary, &c. Believe in whatever makes you feel the best about yourself.
But - like many other bands - they are not at all above using the leadoff slot to just 'get on base' with a reliably rousing rockah. In honor of Monday [ed: this post was supposed to have gone up this morning], allow me to allow MES to kickstart your week with two old- and two new-school openers:
THE FALL - FRIGHTENED, the first track on their first proper album, 1979's Live at the Witch Trials (NOT a live album, NO witches were tried during the making of this album!) - lyrics here. Kind of an astonishingly direct statement from Mark, in retrospect, both in the language and in the subject matter - amphetamine paranoia has been a major MES leitmotif from the very beginning, but he rarely addresses it in such plain language (other than, of course, in the immortal Totally Wired):
I'm in a trance
and I sweat
I don't want to dance
I want to go home
I feel trapped by mutual affection
and I don't know how to use freedom
I spend hours looking sideways
to the time when I was sixteen
and I sweat
I don't want to dance
I want to go home
I feel trapped by mutual affection
and I don't know how to use freedom
I spend hours looking sideways
to the time when I was sixteen
THE FALL - LAY OF THE LAND, kicking off the must-have 1984 album The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall, lyrics here. Amazing and dramatic start to this awesome album - the band + Brix ominously, even GOTHILY incanting "LAY, LAY, LAY!," then Mark, sounding like a zombie: "ARMA-GEDDON / THIS BEAUTIFUL TREE" OMG WTF, Christ! The drums come in way faster than you are expecting, which is one of the most infallibly awesome plays in the book, and the way the drums come back in sooner than you think in the chorus is a great detail that gives you the pleasurable feeling of being pulled back into the verse, like Scorpion-style "GET OVER HERE" shit. Paul Hanley on skins!
THE FALL - TOUCH SENSITIVE, from The Marshall Suite, lyrics here. Crowd pleaser, sooooo rousing - HEY HEY HEY! Perfectly condensed MES misanthropia: "an encounter on the street / if you smile you are a creep", plus a verse about trying to take a piss behind a tree and getting busted by a "star wars police vehicle." The strings are somewhat unfortunate and pervade the album, but they're pretty ignorable.
THE FALL - D.I.Y. MEAT, from 1996's The Light User Syndrome aka my favorite Fall album, lyrics here. LUS is the Fall's best-produced album, one of their longest, and it has some really startlingly weird/inventive/awesome songs. But it kicks off relatively straightforwardly, with this, D.I.Y. MEAT - laying down a rock solid, propulsive groove, then gracefully sliding into a chorus with an uncharacteristically soaring, shimmering synth line and a warm-yet-subtle melodic hook - and MES somehow making "he was a handyman!" sound anthemic.
Also noteworthy: cackles @ 1:30, what a sound! MES is an amazing vocalist, and extraordinarily creative with the way he uses his gift - not only did he essentially define the art of talk-singing (there is a German word for this, music hummers help me out!) for the indie rock milieu, and not only did he create an entirely new way of pronouncing the English language that has somehow become a legitimate style of pronounciation for others to imitate, but he routinely pulls out great non-singing vocalizations like this or manipulates his voice to produce amazing effects.
More later tonite (maybe). I SHOULD NOTE, why not here, that while the Fall Lyrics Paraders deserve to be sainted for keeping up with The Fall's 40 albums' worth of lyrics, these lyrics shouldn't necessarily be considered definitive. I've definitely heard lines that seemed pretty clearly different from their transcriptions there, to my ear at least - so, mileage may vary, &c. Believe in whatever makes you feel the best about yourself.
ok, tell me what you *really* think