The Fall in 1985

The Fall was and remains a group in constant flux. I have no idea how many people have come and gone from the ranks of the band, but it’s clear that Mark E. Smith, the band’s front man, has a lyric pouring out of him at pretty much every moment when he’s awake. Who knows, he might even dream songs. But that’s gotta be a lot to deal with as a musician in his employ. And for that reason, I suppose, the rotating cast of players in the Fall could be explained. But beginning in 1983, with Smith’s marriage to Brix (aka Laura Elisse Salenger), there was a moment of stability. Of course, that only lasted for a few years prior to the Hanley brothers – who played bass and drums – departing. Steve would return to play bass for 1985’s This Nation's Saving Grace. That, however, created a redundancy considering Simon Rogers had joined the group to replace Hanley. So now Rogers shifted to keyboards.

Confusing as that all was the Fall has been able to remain a fluid group refusing to turn in an album that comes off sounding half conceived. Of course, some are stronger than others, but in it’s six years of existence leading up to This Nation's Saving Grace the group had released something like ten albums – a few being avowed classics.

Call it post-punk, or whatever, that’s not the point. Mark E. Smith has something to get off his chest and he does it here – again. Some of the tracks are accidents like “Paint Work,” which is all tape edits and manipulations. The homage to Can in the form of “I am Damo Suzuki” is so hap dash offering even as various borrowed rhythms comprise the song. It almost sounds like Bauhaus covering the German band – and that’s not really too bad.

Elsewhere, Smith and company almost reach back to its faster paced, earlier stuff – “Couldn’t Get Ahead” for instance. But in this approach the Fall winds up sounding like a Pere Ubu track from a decade earlier. Well, that’s not fair – perhaps Rocket From the Tombs. There.

Either way, by 1985 the Fall really wasn’t the vanguard of something brand spanking new. It was most assuredly a weird music, but not forward looking like the New York’s Last Exit.

And again, in some other places, Smith comes off as if he’s convinced his band to channel some other, earlier punkers. “Gut of the Quantifier” and its huge, rolling bass line seems dirty enough to come from the Stranglers catalog. It doesn’t, obviously, but the tension created during that song could count as the high point of This Nation's Saving Grace.

Regardless of what was good and what was bad from this effort, though, the disc functions as an appropriate extension of the Fall’s catalog. It won’t blow anyone away – or it shouldn’t at least. But what Smith was able to get down on tape was a music that’s still vibrant and creative, despite being just one of countless albums he would write in a scant few years.