I went to Bury once. It was very windy…
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[5.67]
Jonathan Bogart: Can you call it diminishing returns if not a single thing has changed in thirty years?
[6]
Mallory O’Donnell: It’s outrageous to think that this obscene gremlin is even still alive. Four points for that. The music? Sure enough, sounds exactly like the old stuff. Man, I miss Brix. Man, I miss Dave Bush. Man, I miss somebody being in this band who isn’t Mark E. Smith or five.
[4]
Kat Stevens: I swear they’ve already released this song, but perhaps not all at once. There’s the same old 30-year-old stylophone from “New Face In Hell”, and the coughing one-note bass that is firmly late-doors Fall (think “Blindness” off Fall Heads Roll or “Dr Buck’s Letter”). And don’t forget the sludge! For the last decade or so The Fall have become very fond of determined one-note trudges like this (I put it down to less speed, more booze), but they’ve always had a little bit of swampiness about them. Remember the near-unlistenable “Spectre vs Rector”? The album version, “Bury pt 1”, is SLUDGIER THAN THAT, i.e. pretty awesome. The murky intro of the single edit is extended to a minute and a half, and is played through the crappiest, most distorted speakerphone that MES could find. But the second half (‘part 3’, well done there dudes) is full of the space and bounce from the early 80s, the bursts of noise being spared for a two-note riff and Smith muttering some turf-war lyrics about his home town. It’s a one-fingered salute from the world’s oldest and grumpiest kid-at-the-back-of-the-bus, who has forgotten 80% of his songs and must write them again.
[8]
Zach Lyon: I have to assume that fans of The Fall wouldn’t see this as an appropriate starting point. I hope so, at least.
[4]
Jer Fairall: 50,000 Fall fans aren’t necessarily wrong, but some concerted effort has yet to turn me into one of them. Mark E. Smith’s smart-sounding lyrics and cockily authoritative delivery here give the appearance of being something I should admire, but the presentation is so detached and uncharismatic that I can never find my way in. Oh well, maybe the next album will be different…
[5]
Edward Okulicz: If this were my mate’s farty garage band, I’d be pretty impressed. But a band’s present’s what gets scored, not their reputation, and apart from the odd stylophone wheeze here and there and a beginning that I thought was going to be a post-punk “Nutbush City Limits”, I couldn’t tell the middle of this from the end, the collection of unpleasant noises changes very little from one part to the next and it doesn’t do much rhythmically but lumber in an ungainly fashion.
[2]
Martin Skidmore: Although I am largely contemptuous of new punk or post-punk acts, I have an endless tolerance for the Fall, one of my favourite bands ever. They sound much as they always do – rather shambolic, rumbling along with MES yelling over the top. This doesn’t strike me as one of their more exciting, catchy or memorable numbers, but there are very few acts I have listened to as much over the years, and I don’t suppose they’ll ever get a low mark from me.
[7]
Chuck Eddy: Your Future Our Clutter (a garage sale addict’s slogan if there ever was one) is a suprisingly good album given that it comes from a band I stopped caring about nearly a quarter-century ago, a band that hit its creative peak somewhere between 1979 and 1982, which is even earlier than I hit mine. Anyway-ahh, what can I say-ahh? This is neither the album’s best nor worst track. The “tune,” when there is one (parts 1 and 3 not 2, I guess) reminds me more than a pinch of “No Bulbs” from 1984, which is fine since that’s one of their best singles ever. And even after decades of by-now-more-famous indie liars pretending to be influenced by his band, Mark E. still rants better than any ranter he begat. On the other hand, compared to when he was a genius, this is somewhat blurry and disjointed.
[7]
Mark Sinker: After nearly 30 years, I feel my days of fashioning new ways to explain how the Fall roll are surely reaching a middle. It’s not as if they’re fashioning new ways to roll. So imagine Doctor Who if it still starred William Hartnell. He’d only be 102, pickled leather and puckered soul, time and relative distension in (sustained) spite. Companions a blur. Plight all but gestural. Stance a knotted hole in the flow.
[8]
