boombox-generation
THIS is the album by The Fall that everyone should know (rather than Saving Grace). It has some of the best lyrics, and tunes, of any of their later albums. And possibly their best cover version in Lost In Music. Glam-Racket, Paranoia Man, A Past Gone Mad are all up there in the canon of great Fall songs. And this would be worth 5 stars for Service alone, one of sadly few wistful and poignant MES lyrics, made even more so by the janky House piano that tries to drive it along (and almost makes it). The nineties production is one of few reservations here. At the risk of being one of the 'lookback bores', these songs really would have benefited from a bigger sound, similar to Hex or Saving Grace. Or even the lo-fi clanking of Grotesque. This seems to fall (ahem) between pretty much every (bar) stool, soundwise. Oh, and Light/Fireworks could have been left off the end and everyone would have been much happier, I suspect. For better versions of many of these songs, The Twenty Seven Points live album shows what they could have sounded like. There's not really such a thing as a bad Fall album in my book, and this is one of the best. I just wish they'd beefed the sound up a bit.