Fall marathon 2: Grotesque/Slates

One thing that keeps coming to mind as I go through these early albums, which isn't something generally associated with The Fall, is how much they groove. Everyone knows about the more angular influences - 60s garage rock, Beefheart, Can, etc. - but it's too easily forgotten that they come as much from a background of Northern Soul (and attendant amphetamine culture), and those kind of influences can be discerned in tracks like "C'n'C-s Mithering" from their third album, "Grotesque (after the Gramme)". Smith's caustic sense of humour seems to come more to the fore on this album, through such songs as "The Container Drivers" and "English Scheme", where barbed comments on the UK music scene reveal another of his perennial bugbears. All the elements from the first two albums seem to click into a greater whole on this album,

and the result is their most satisfying long-playing outing so far.

"Slates" is, strictly speaking, an E.P. rather than an album, but it's one of my favourite Fall records, so I certainly wasn't going to skip it. I remember an interview with Steve Albini In one of the inky music papers where he named it as a favourite album, describing it as "a weird band at their weirdest", and that certainly holds true, not just for the angular, atonal guitar stabs in opener "Middle Mass", but the surprisingly emotional "An Older Lover etc", as well as the heartfelt "Leave the Capitol". it's only 6 songs long, but this is as substantial a record as any they've made, and I'm tempted to say it's the first truly essential Fall record, one that belongs in everybody's collection, whether they're interested in the Fall or not. And it prepares the way for an absolutely blinding record, which is next on my pile...