The Infotainment Scan

Chaotic

The Fall were a daft band. Decent players fronted by a man who was a legend in his own imagination, with a penchant for finishing every line with "Uh!". The songs just aren't very catch, and the 90s sounds don't work.

I'm sure there are people that love this album. I don't.

была настроена сразу довольно отрицательно, особенно после первых двух песен, но дальше стало поинтереснее и даже немного понравилось. чучуть напомнило фонтейнс, как кто-то отметил в комментариях, но совсем чучуть, дуновением ветерка. но вокалист конечно очень слабенький, пришел поболтать чисто побубнить, а когда пел, то абсолютно мимо, брр. а музыка крутая вполне

If this didn't influence LCD Soundsystem, I don't know what did. Pretty good actually.

Musicianship is good. Vocals not so much, hence the 2.

This was kind of all over the place, I ended up enjoying this at a 3 but it started out as a 2 for me.

There were only two tracks on this album that I managed to finish: the opener and A Past Gone Mad. The band was doing decent stuff, sometimes interesting, otherwise fairly middle-of-the-road. The vocalist, however, was awful. Couldn't stand his tenor-Lou Reed speak-singing and his inability to be in the neighborhood of in-tune when he actually tried singing. The only positive to say about the vocals is, "at least he wasn't using autotune." Granted, it wasn't an option back then (Antares didn't release Autotune until 4 years after this album was released), but still, it's the only positive I can muster for those vocals. 1 star

Ass

1. Ladybird (Green Grass) - 5/10 2. Lost In Music - 4/10 3. Glam-Racket - 4/10 4. Im Going To Spain - 5/10 5. It's A Curse - 4/10 6. Paranoia Man In Cheap Shit Room - 5/10 7. Service - 5/10 8. The League Of Bald Headed Men - 6/10 9. A Past Gone Mad - 5/10 10. Light / Fireworks - 5/10 11. Why Are People Grudgeful - 4/10 12. League Moon Monkey Mix - 2/10 OVERALL - 4.5/10

It was quite fun, dissonant and aggressive but not really stupid

i did not like it. in like 4 of his songs he was just repeating the same word over and over again. i also don’t like his voice. the only song i enjoyed was why are people grudgeful? and that was just for the instrumental. overall not the best ever, lyrics were just words with no meaning, it was ehh

Quite like the music and backing but the vocals don't work for me, half spoken half sung.

какой-то очень странный панк/пост-панк. Даже зацепиться не за что было. Прошло как шум. Прослущал еще раз - то же самое.

Genius at work RIP Mark E Smith, Don pleased I saw The Fall on a few occasions🙏🏻

So if you can’t sing you just start a post-punk band and just shout some random lyrics in a microphone over some layers of some doomy guitars. Or even worse, over some electro beat. Reminds me a bit of the recent post-punk hype with Fontaines D.C. and others which also don’t do anything for me. 2/5

So much civic pride flowing when I listen to The Fall

At times this band's sound reminds me of the Replacements, and at others their bass and synths remind me of New Order... both are bands that I love. And I would love this too... if not for the awful vocalist. His performance has neither pitch nor rhythmic considerations... sadly rendering this album unlistenable. The last two tracks are marginally better, but it's too much to overlook for not enough payoff. I see there are more albums by this band on the list?! Let's hope the vocals improve.

Another uninteresting post-punk album. Some of the grooves are decent but the vocals are horribly boring and subpar. 1 listen

Once again I struggle with this talking vocalist style. Some good instrumentation/beats have been overshadowed.

Just not memorable

Not for me

Joa kann man machen. Nix besonderes wenn man mal so andere Rock Alben anguckt aus der selben Zeit. Aber paar nice ones dabei.2,5/5

Is it supposed to be cool to sing off key for whole sections of songs?

Again another album that doesn’t grab me and just feels like noise. Maybe it’s just me but pretty unpressed by this.

pelos comentários eu imaginava que seria terrível, mas vocês são exagerados demais #pqp é um post-punk como qualquer outro, com algumas músicas legais e é isso. não sei se o vocalista tem alguma polêmica ou algo do tipo pra todo mundo odiar ele, mas o estilo de cantar dele nem me irritou tanto. tem outras personalidades que o pessoal baba que eu acho vocalmente muito piores.

It’s a meh album. Didn’t disliked it but couldn’t care for it either.

Pass.

The 2nd time I've been surprisingly impressed by The Fall on this list.

A couple of the songs were actually good but most of it was ass

Instrumental fajny ale wkurza wokal

Has it's bright points but not something (or an artist) I would voluntarily listen to.

A very interesting mix of post-punk and alternative dance where both genres are combined in a nice way. But first, I want to start with the biggest flaw of this album, so I can get it out of the way as soon as possible: the voice. Why did the singer need to be so damn monotone? I actually do not mind his very drunk way of singing and weird pronunciation, I think it adds personality, but it gets very very tiring hearing the exact same lines and voice lacking of melody. Now into the good things. Really like how much energy the use of alternative dance elements brings to the sound. The electronic rhythms and touches can add a lot of life to the songs with their either hypnotic (like in the first songs) or frantic rhythms (like "Paranoia Man In Cheap Shit Room" and "A Past Gone Mad", with the last one being quite close to Break Beat). The Post-Punk aspects do shine as well. The very playful groovy organic guitars and bass lines are responsible of some really really nice catchy melodies that can incite to move as much as the rhythm section, as in "Lost In Music" or "It's A Curse". As great as I'm painting the instrumentation, I must say that in some occasions they can be a bit too repetitive, such as in "Glam-Racket" and "The League of Bald Headed Man", but overall it is a decent and interesting experience that would be way greater if the incredibly one-dimensional voice didn't taint it so much.

Love the music. The spoken word stuff got old.

Not bad, gets stronger towards the end

01) Ladybird (Green Grass) - 6,0 02) Lost in Music - 7,0 03) Glam-Racket - 6,5 04) I'm Going to Spain - 6,5 05) It's a Curse - 6,5 06) Paranoia Man in Cheap Sh*t Room - 5,5 07) Service - 5,5 08) The League of Bald-Headed Men - 5,5 09) A Past Gone Mad - 5,5 10) Light/Fireworks - 4,5 TOTAL: 5,90 (59/100) Current ranking: 852/1057

Worthy of a comment, weird as fuq

This was pretty ok, just seemed like an identity crisis with styles all over the place. Maybe I didn’t have a good listen, but I’m not going to replay it. 2.5/5

Forgettable noise

Not sure why I had to listen to this before I die. The music is ok but the singer can’t sing for shit. Awful

Nice, an album by the Fall. "The Infotainment Scan" was pretty good, especially during the second half. My favourite is "Why Are You So Grudgeful?", which only appears on the CD release. "The Infotainment Scan" feels like a remnant of the 80s at times. It's also wildly different compared to the last Fall album I reviewed. 3 stars for "The Infotainment Scan".

Some fun tracks on this one. New one to me. The singing voice gets old.

Ik krijg hier hoofdpijn van

Wie zijn de mensen die niet fucken met Mark E Smith's vocals? Deze man is captivating. Ik ken hem eigenlijk vooral van de paar Gorillaz tracks waar hij aan mee heeft gewerkt (waaronder het briljante Delirium, van de laatste plaat, dat pas na zijn dood is uitgebracht), maar ik moet echt eens wat beter in The Fall duiken. Verder klinkt deze specifieke plaat echt als driekwart van de moderne post-punk die de afgelopen jaren wordt uitgebracht, alleen dit is al 30 jaar oud. Op veel moderne meuk haak ik vaak af door eentonigheid of matige vocalisten, laat dit een voorbeeld zijn hoe het wel moet.

A bit of a weird one. To start off with I sort of dogged the charismatic, drawling nature of some of the songs and decent instrumental, but the incessant repetition of lyrics and overbearing dancey backing music in the second half of the album killed it for me. It drifted from mild enjoyment to irritation. I sort of admire the chutzpah but it’s still too much. An acquired taste that I don’t possess.

Like a manc punk poet. I guess just depends if that dry delivery and lyrical oddities float your boat. I didn't identify a major shift between the songs so it didn't grab me particularly and therefore delayed my 1001 journey due to indifference and "having" to get through it at fleeting times. There is quite a brave stab at grabbing authenticity through the vulnerable singing style that scatteres across odd song but its boarderline annoying when the voice is breaking and you have to decide if its shit or genuine madness. On balance this just feels like a time gone by 90's hit that cant quite stand up now and while it has some interesting elements they are not consistant or deep enough for me.

This sounds like a grittier, rawer Stranglers. But that description makes it sound a lot better than it is. I liked most of the tracks in a "good band you see down the local bar" kind of way. There is also an awful lot of it and none of it particularly stood out to me. Like a long conveyor belt of average rock noise with some low energy vocals. Towards the end, there was also some mandatory nineties electronic weirdness thrown in, which I am often quite partial to, but again not really in this case. Potentially would score higher if they had curated the album to a more condensed offering.

2/5. This whole album moves with a sense of swagger that it never actually earns in its runtime. The blending of genres like Post-punk, Glam, dance and alt rock here should be interesting in theory but in execution it honestly just felt kinda bland and lifeless most of the time. The sing-speak vocal delivery also ends up getting old pretty quick because there isn’t much variance in terms of delivery throughout the record. Felt very underwhelmed by this one.

Started off pretty good, but his voice really drags this down as the album goes along. Also, yet another fairly boring artist with three albums on this list while super creative, interesting (and more popular) artists are left off.

the majority of this sounds just like their other albums on the list. the music is pretty good but the vocals are annoying. i did enjoy the more dance oriented tracks since it changed things up a bit. the goodwill i had for those tracks is directly offset, if not overshadowed, by hatred i had for the tracks Paranoia Man and Light/Fireworks

Not my beer. Sloppy, bad, arduous.

This was interesting. I don't think its quite my jam, but it could be given the right mood? Might have to sit with this one for a bit, but if nothing else I appreciate it.

Contrast between the voice and the music. Has something of Iggy pop somehow but nothing exciting outside of I'm going to spain

All over the place. Really like it. 3.5

Boring.

Did not finish!

I have to say this album was pretty good but the voice of Smith definitely takes away from how much better this album could actually be. At times, his voice actually made me want to turn it off, but I powered through. I commend the rest of the band as they did a great job and at times make Smith's voice much more tolerable. Overall though this album sits as an average listen and nothing more, so 3 stars it gets.

This may not be the best Fall album overall but it might be the funniest. The League of Bald-Headed Men and It's a Curse are the standouts.

not as exciting as other Fall albums, more exciting than 99% of this list I think a person should hear the bass and drums come in on Winter from Hex Enduction Hour before they die.

I think about the idea of infotainment a lot, partly because of my line of work and partly because it’s just one of those things a guy can idly think about when he wants to get pissed off for no reason. One neutral-to-positive effect it’s had is that it’s made me like weird crap more. As in, crap that isn’t immediately palatable. I resent when it feels like something is trying to trick me into liking it just by being digestible. So, I like The Fall.

quite interesting when it tends towards dance music, but the vocal style grates over the length of an album, and some of the writing is a little farther afield

🫤

Ah the fall . Personally I smiled when Mark E Smith's vocals kicked in . This project is reminding how much I love the fall, while introducing me to new albums of theirs. Previously I’ve been put off by the sheer number of albums and let’s be honest they are not an easy or casual listen. Surprisingly this is a very listenable album for them - hence its success , while still being quintessentially The Fall. Which is probably why the average rating is low

Not sure what to make of this one. His voice didn’t do it for me and it was repetitive. I don’t see the relevance I guess.

Part of the nature of this challenge is that certain albums hit you at certain parts of your life. Some are great, some not so much. As I was playing this album, I threw my earbuds in my pocket and forgot to take them out before hopping in the hot tub. Let's just say the album sounded better with water logged earbuds than before they were soaked. 1/10

One of The Fall's most accessible and commercial albums but as a Fall fan, not particularly one of my favourites. Tracks I enjoy returning to include a great cover (Lost in Music) and It's a Curse (lyrically prime Fall); "Down their long egg breath Cheap shaving lotion days Their sandwiches stashed under their side seats Their frog-like chins ready to burst It's a curse". I mean who else could come out with that kind of brilliance? Paranoid Man in Cheap Shit Room follows it, effortlessly but the other tracks don't quite hit the Mark E. Smith I like. I prefer The Fall less polished and more chaotic; this seems to be tryng to sound like The Chemical Brothers or something. In places it seems that he's actually trying to sing and it reminds me of The Frenz Experiment, which also suffers from too much shine and vocal effort. Still a good album though.

290. ok

Hoo boy, where to begin. I guess the positives? The instrumentation is some of the best I've ever heard. Like seriously, all of the music is captivating and engaging. But those vocals; at best they kind of match the style of the music it's paired with, but at worst it just sounds like drunken karaoke slurring, which reading what I did about The Fall and Mark E Smith probably isn't even that far from the truth. Man I wish someone else sang here and actually gave it a spirited and melodic shot, but as it is the vocals really sour the whole experience.

Musically it was pretty good, Past Gone Mad was especially fun. It’s a shame that the vocals really ruin it for me, just cannot see myself willingly listening to this guy sing.

de muziek is oprecht echt goed, maar die stem is echt wel heel mid

Liked this one more than their first entry. They sound too light for a true punk band but applying that same edge to a poppier sound works better in my opinion. Would listen again.

2.7 Sounds like 2000s iggy pop albums. Pretty meh on it

Pésimo

I can see how this is influential to LCD and others, and for that reason I can trick myself into enjoying it. But it just ain't that good. Sorry.

Now I see where Franz Ferdinand got their influences

This is a weird one. Not sure if it's the lyrics on the mix or on my headphones, they're low and don't grab me or if it's his style. Good music but it didn't grab me. Not shite but I likely to get another listen. Weird cover of a disco track too.

++: Paranoia Man in Cheap Sh*t Room, A Past Gone Mad, Why Are People Grudgeful? +: Lady Bird (Greengrass), Lost in Music, The League of Bald-Headed Men +-: Glam-Racket, It's a Curse, Service -: I'm Going to Spain --: Light/Fireworks 3,6/10

this album fucks. had to listen twice to be sure but there's a kind of wiser-than-its-years vibe suffusing the youth and playfulness of these tracks. magnetic for sure

That stoopid song about the bald headed brigade or whatever went on forever, then it bloody repeated again at the end of the album! Aaaa

Enjoyed this one. It breezed by and never got boring.

The Fall is a band I wasn’t familiar with until starting this project. Live at the Witch Trials was my introduction to them and I enjoyed it immensely. This album cements my adoration for this act, they’re weird, they do sloppy just right, the vocal delivery is talky but not in the annoying way but in the proper post punk way. It just sounds fresh to me and they really do work into that musical crevice that is difficult to master without coming across as a trying to hard to be cool type act. Also, The League Moon Monkey Mix may have seemed to be completely unnecessary to some but dude, it’s so completely necessary. 5 stars

Bob Dylan x The B52's, but only the worst parts. Ain't shit.

Not so good for my taste, musically is awesome though, many layers and stuff

I thought the guy's voice was a gimmick on the first song...nope. even when he actually does sing.

Enjoyed this as lot more than the Witch trials album. Can really feel the indie / dance Madchester influence. Its a much more 'poppier' accessible album than I was expecting and there was lots to enjoy. In particular the lost in music cover. My main issue with the Fall remains in that I'm not really a fan of Mark E Smith - either as a signer or as a person. On top of this he's a big MCFC fan - so clearly a wrong'en. Would probably give it a 4 - but deducting a point for cheating and ruining football for everyone.

The Infotainment Scan Similarly to Live at the Witch Trials I wasn’t familiar with this album, although I’m pretty sure I’ve heard their version of Lost in Music a few times, and I do like it a lot. For some reason Mark E Smith changing the lyrics from ‘I quit my 9 to 5’ to ‘I quit my 10 to 5’ really tickles me. It obviously has a softer, and for them, more commercially appealing sound, clearly heavily influenced by The Happy Mondays. I think that really works over the opening 4 songs Ladybird and Glam-Racket in particular, but by the time it gets to It’s a Curse I find I’m missing the more stereotypical thud and bass of their normal sound. It probably doesn’t help that It’s a Curse sounds a lot like that U2 song from a few years back. Paranoia Man in Cheap Shit Room is excellent though, breaking up the smoother sound with some typical abrasive awkwardness. After that it’s a little more uneven, Service is very Happy Mondays and the generic early 90s dance vibe of Past Gone Mad feels more Utah Saints and I’m not sure it sits that well. Light/Fireworks is great though, little more than some growling and plasticy percussion until the last minute, but it creates a great little odd moment to end the album. This Nation’s Saving Grace still remains the apogee of the Fall albums that I do know, and I think this does miss the growling bass, thudding percussion and spiky snarl of that album, sitting a notch or two below it at a 4. ℹ️ℹ️ℹ️ℹ️ Playlist submission: Lost in Music

'Glam Racket' is a good descriptor for the album in general - loud with chunky guitar tone and lots of sustain. They've also absorbed some of the baggy dance scene ('I'm Going to Spain' is washed out shoegaze; the 'Service' piano hook like Happy Mondays), with disco-derived bass, and more of an upbeat feel compared to their debut. Darn it, they even cover 'Lost in Music', a strangely compelling version. It's proper Britrock. I favour 'Live at the Witch Trials', but this blends that aesthetic with glam rock and 90s guitars. Its all rather great, and right on the edge of topsies. Think I will...

Indie, punky goodness. Lost in Music alone is worth the price of admission. There’s no need to listen to the second disc though, unless you’re obsessed with Mark E Smith.

Kind of like New Order mixed with Primus but less peanut butter and jelly and more lamb and tuna fish. Not sure I get it.

Some of the songs themselves are enjoyable, but this album is cursed by some of the worst lyrics on the entire list.

The backing music was decent, but the monotone talk-singing vocals were intolerable

Yeah these guys definitely didn't need three albums on the list

Very surprised by how good this album. Reminded me of other great alternative bands of the 90’s.

Good running music

Great band and unique delivery

(5/7) I liked this more than I thought I would

I get the impression that a lot of artists I like really like the Fall. I like some of the stuff on offer here. Going to Spain is cute. I wanted more? Also 1993 is a crazy year for this, 1986 maybe.

Yeah its okay, i can see how people enjoy it but its not really my thing.

Yet another singer that ruins an otherwise good band.

Okay, so I get it - it's a curse, but why did the song have to be so annoyingly repetitive... after that song, it just went downhill and I was annoyed with the whole rest of the album. The first few songs were decent as a background listen and they were pretty chill, despite nothing really happening most of the time. I don't know, overall, just a bit meh.