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.