First off, I’ll admit I’m a little biased. The Fall are my favorite band. I also hate my favorite band. With a passion. Oddly, I came to this realization after explaining I was anxiously awaiting the release of the new Fall album, not the new Fall-Out Boy album, which is what my co-worker thought I was going on about for the past few weeks. 

Part of it’s my own fault. Since I suffer from completionist syndrome I’ve bought every re-issue — I mean I own four versions of their first album “Live at the Witch Trials” and six versions of the album “Perverted by Language”, every dodgy compilation, half-ass live album which contain songs that will fade in the middle and fade out before the end, complete live albums that amount to substandard audience quality not to mention dozens and dozens of nyc/philly shows that would flirt with brilliance outnumbered by the ones where MES would stumble around and twirl the bands amplifier knobs before slurring a few words and then I vow never to go to another Fall show and yet somehow always end up at the next one. I am sick. But that’s another story.

This is the UK edition of the new Fall album Post Reformation TLC. I think this clocks in at studio album number 26 featuring a brand new line-up after an approximate five years of stability ended with some inter-band tension on the last US tour. And of course The US version will differ slightly from the UK edition.

For a guy who claims everyone is ripping him off, Mark E. Smith seems to do a fair amount of borrowing himself. And this has always been a bone of contention between me and Mark E. Smith. Well, if we actually had a conversation it would be. But for right now, it’s just something that irks me a little every time he brings this up. Take the opening cut “Over! Over!” it’s just “Coming Down” by the United States of America. Even the first line is “I think it’s over now, I think it’ ending” and then the lyrics diverge but the music credit should really Joseph Byrd not Smith.

And then we’re on to the the seven minute title track which amounts to seven dull minutes of the same two notes being played over and over as Mark repeats the mantra Black River/Fall Motel/Cheese States/Reformation.

And lyrically is where the album is hurting. Actually, this has been an area of decline for sometime. The years 80–83 were nothing short of sheer brilliance, a torrent of words just kept sputtering out of MES: Garden from Perverted by Language, New Face in Hell from Grotesque and nearly everything from Hex Enduction Hour — take this bit from Winter from “Hex Enduction Hour”:

I’d just walked past the alcoholics’ dry-out house
The lawn was littered with cans of Barbican
There was a feminist’s Austin Maxi parked outside
With anti-nicotine anti-nuclear stickers on the side
…on the inside and they didn’t even smoke…
Anyway two weeks before the mad kid had said to me
“I’ll take both of you on,
I’ll take both of you on”
Then he seemed the young one
He had a parka on and a black cardboard Archbishop’s hat
With a green-fuzz skull and crossbones
He’d just got back from the backward kids’ party
Anyway then he seemed the young one
But now he looked like the victim of a pogrom 

That’s a lot of words and thought to digest and now we’re left with such pearls of as wisdom as “this is a business line not a chat line” from “Fall Sound”.

I’d still consider 84–86 prime years as well but after that it’s hit and miss. The Fall are still capable of great moments like the Peel Session version of Blindness a couple of years back that are just plain absent on Reformation Post TLC.

The album continues with a decent run through Merle Haggard’s “White Line Fever” and then things sink again with “Insult Song”, which is nothing more than a novelty number with Mark adopting an American accent and insulting the band — and the thing with novelty tracks is the joke wears off after a couple of listens — just as your favorite joke loses it’s staying power after you’ve heard it the 100th time. This would’ve been better off relegated to a b‑side.

Things would’ve picked up with “My Door is Never” if the band could’ve captured the power they have when they peform this song live but it just comes off limp here not to mention one of Mark’s weakest vocals, which is a shame because the band has pulled off some amazing live versions.

Then it’s two brief numbers — both under two minutes — pass by and we arrive at track “The Wright Stuff” sung by Mark’s wife Elena Poulou. I’m glad my cd player has a skip button because this is where it gets some serious usage.

Then it’s on to “Scenario” which is doesn’t quite measure up to the live versions but comes pretty close even if this song is about 75% borrowed (United States of America/Captain Beefheart and lyrics heavily borrowed from Anne Breen poem “Pal of my Cradle Days”).

No Fall album would be complete with the obligatory wankery piece and you get it for ten full minutes with “Das Boat” which is Mark and Elena muttering E E EE/E E EE Das Boat over low humming keyboards followed by tape samples of the band talking over “The Bad Stuff”

And then after a significant drop in volume we get the last proper song on the album “Systematic Abuse” which sound remarkably like “Assume” from the last album.

And how could i forget the closing song “outro” 35 seconds of what sounds like a bass and snare drum thumping.

Of course I just plunked down another 11 bucks for the american edition which will drop two tracks (one of the under two minute songs “The Usher” and “outro”), and different edits of Insult Song, Reformation and Das Boat plus four video clips from the show at the Hiro Ballroom in NYC last Novermber that the Fall headlined and walked off after 7 songs.

So now I’m off to buy the single of “Reformation” that will be backed with different versions of Over/Over and My Door is Never and contemplate buying the vinly off “Refomation Post-TLC” since the mix is supposedly slighty different than the CD.

I told you I was sick.