The Fall - This Nation's Saving Grace (1985)

Some journalist - don't remember who - once described the Fall as sounding like tossers rummaging around in a broom cupboard, which I love because they do - or I suppose did - and it's funny, both accurate and way off the mark at the same time; and ultimately it doesn't matter because the Fall were fucking magnificent, and insults just seem to slide off into irrelevance. I don't know if this was the best album but it's the one I like most, and the first one I caved in and bought. Years later I had a conversation with Larry Peterson during which I offered the Fall as an example of how bands can sound decent without rehearsing the life out of their material. He pointed out that, contrary to the tossers rummaging around in a broom cupboard hypothesis, the Fall were actually tight as fuck and hence extremely oiled and well rehearsed, figuratively speaking. Of course, he was right. What I'd lazily taken for a loose, almost ramshackle quality was nothing of the sort.

I'm still not exactly sure what the quality is, that thing which sounds like the Fall and only the Fall and no other band ever - apart from the Kevin Staples Band* I suppose. Possibly it's simply what music sounds like without the bullshit you don't really need, practically translating to a lack of artificial embellishment - something akin to what Steve Albini was always trying to achieve. The result is usually what tends to sound like a ruthlessly well practiced live band, so it's the sound of human beings twanging, thumping and howling away in real time, doing what it needs to do musically- according to Smith's vision - to the very best of its abilities rather than chasing virtuosity or ostentation for their own sake. The vision itself always remained faithful to the basics of rock and roll as something derived from the blues, but without feeling the need to repeat or impersonate unless there was some specific point in doing so, and experimentation was always part of it; which is why they sounded like that, I guess.

This one is particularly cinematic in places, with touches of krautrock and the usual elements which seem to wilfully work against whatever else the track is doing - the distorted or otherwise loosely detuned vocal, or the drums on the Damo Suzuki song doing their own thing; or that passage on Paintwork where we're invited to pretend the twenty-four track studio is a mono portable cassette recorder and someone has accidentally taped the sound of the telly over the rhythm section; and while none of these elements were unique to the Fall, only the Fall ended up with rock and roll songs which felt as though they could be discussed as novels alongside Burroughs, James Joyce, or whoever else you care to mention from the last century. Each track is its own self-contained world, even when the literally narrative element is so minimal as it is on LA. It's surreal, funny, grim, witty, grounded, bloody awkward, and mind-boggling all at the same time. They were truly unique.

*: Two admittedly listenable tracks on Another Thing from the Crypt (1984) on the Dead Hedgehog label sounding so much like a Stars In Their Eyes tribute to the Fall that it's hard to work out why they bothered, and apparently they didn't after that.

Busdriver - Fear of a Black Tangent (2005)

I heard somewhere that Busdriver was what the kids on the streets are listening to—excuse me, what the kids on the streets are checking for these days; and while most things associated with today's young people tend to be pure fucking garbage, I like to keep an open mind because I know it can't all be rainbow haired foetuses named after forms of anxiety medication. However, it turns out that Fear of a Black Tangent came out in 2005, meaning it probably counts as old school by now, although this may also be why it's worth a listen; so swings and roundabouts or summink…

Should I ever have given the impression, I'm not actually down on backpack rap - or underground, which is maybe a less annoying tag - just the stuff which sticks to the self-important formula while sneering at everyone else - the funky puritans who want you to expand your mind with a game of chess prior to making sweet lurve to your woman partner. Busdriver probably counts as underground, beyond which he's more or less his own genre - intelligent, and I mean real intelligence here, not just some bore aspiring to be your social worker. He's in the same ballpark as E-40 in terms of sonics and mood, also massively witty, which may not be obvious from the first few spins with that verbal firehose blasting away for an hour or more. But sense comes with familiarity, and the gags - delivered with deadpan earnest - are gutbusting once they emerge.

I replied to the wuss with a yo' mama's joke,
When he said how much he pushed the envelope.
A group of sexually ambivalent nihilst, crying from an ovarian cyst,
Picking at a vegetarian dish,
Idolising a German band who barely exist,
But me, my name's never on the full-colour flyer.
I'm just the dull Busdriver,
Thinking 'til my head is a bowl of dust fibers.

Musically, it's as distinct as it is lyrically, and I was surprised to see a full cast of producers listed, having assumed it could only be the work of himself, so beautifully formed is the vision as a whole. The sound leans towards actual instruments, as distinct from bleeps, glitches, and other elements not found in nature; but the way it's all put together is incredible - highly tuneful, and gently psychedelic in the sense of the Bonzos rather than the Legendary Pink Dots - although their name also came to mind. It would be pleasant if unremarkable but for the explosive energy somehow pinning all the notes to the beat, like it's threatening to go drum and bass without ever quite getting there, or if not drum and bass, then maybe one of the more manic Bugs Bunny cartoons run through the projector at four or five times normal speed.

...and by the point at which you believe you've figured all this out, you're now listening so fast that you can actually digest the import of Lefty's Lament, and so realise you've been listening to Public Enemy all along, or a tangent thereof; so I guess that's where the title came from.