I must confess to loving the current day Fall. I love the way Mark E Smith growls and spits more than ever while his young band (who he obviously still loves) play good old-fashioned rock and roll with a slanted twist as if something is about to go off at any moment. The Fall still don’t play songs in the conventional sense but there still remains that almost-there pop side to the group’s music/racket (delete appropriately). Mark E Smith still refuses to sell out or be drawn into any form of indie celeb or conformity (slippers and foot spa territory).

I don’t quite understand the people who say The Fall nowadays just bring out questionable in quality, half-assed material (though I think, while that takes up at most around one-third of people’s opinion, the other two-thirds seem to agree with me; that being that they are still a treasured and exciting band that stand on their own). Paul Morley once said a few years ago that he sometimes questions his own high view of the group, wondering if they really are that good at all. Anytime I have thought this way I just stick on the latest record and before long I’m thinking, “come on..this is amazing stuff”. Each time you listen to them you seem to hear little things in the mix that you hadn’t heard before, whether it be another mumble of Mark’s voice that didn’t seem to be there previously, or a strange bit of feedback that shoots out of the speakers from nowhere. It is almost as if the music is being re-tweaked and worked on at night by some perhaps phantom tiny little high-pitched voiced Fall band while you sleep.

The sometimes good Pitchfork surprised me recently with their review of the group’s latest album, Ersatz GB.  They gave it a low score (2.2) almost out of spite. And even though their previous record Your Future Our Clutter may have been better, it was not better enough for the very same site to score that one 8.8. In fact, there is still some good things going on with Ersatz GB, such ‘Greenway’ (which they, allegedly, half copied from a Greek metal band, which the Pitchfork review alludes to). Other parts of the LP remind me of the fifteen-or-so year ago Fall sound, when they came back to the more punk-grunge sound after several beat-friendly and dance-y records.

‘Nate Will Not Return’ is one of the more strange Fall tunes of recent years, and the way Mark rhymes the end of each line with “nate” is, while slightly bonkers though smile-inducing, has you wondering if something more profound and genius is going on. I guess this is just one way of summing up the trials and wonders of The Fall’s music. ’I've Seen Them Come’ er, sees them doing that bedraggled Stranglers thing again, a theme that seems to crop up at least once on almost every Fall LP these days, while they polish things up a touch with the excellent ‘Taking Off’.   

Thirty-odd studio LP’s in, including many line-ups and years on the circuit, The Fall still remain “always the same, always different”, to quote John Peel, their biggest cheerleader.