1001 Albums Summary

I've been using this site to listen to an album a day for a month or two now and have never written a review until now. I'm motivated to do so here because of how negatively skewed it seems like reviews of this album are. I'd heard of The Fall before this but never bothered to try listening to them. I assumed they were like an Echo and the Bunnymen or Police situation -- pretty straight-forward guitar rock but lumped into more unique company because of their time period. This album was a surprise and after reading more, I'm excited to hear other albums from their decades of activity. The best of this sounds more like Can or Suicide or VU than I would have guessed. It's not mainstream rock masquerading as art. It's more like art in a rock and roll coat. They also remind me of other niche-90s acts like Lungfish, Dave Fridman era Mercury Rev, and other "talky-singer" bands but the fact that the Fall has decades of catalog interests me a LOT Granted, some tracks (A Past Gone Mad) are dated "madchester" sounding relics, but I'm guessing those tracks were their concession to the times. Overall there's some timeless stuff here. Standouts for me: It's a Curse League of Bald Headed Men I'm not rating 5 because it's not a GREAT or PERFECT album but I'm rating 4 because it's surprisingly good and wayy better than I would have guessed.

I gotta give it at least a 4 because Trouble Every Day is a straight up jam and the best Zappa song I've ever heard. I like the second disc in general more than the first. The first is more straight up satire that ends up sounding really dated since they reference a lot of pop music tropes that are no longer common. The second disc is straight up experimental and it boggles my mind that they were able to get away with this in '66.

I remember when this came out. I bought it in a bargain bin year's later (90's sometime). I've listened to it a few times and it's fine but in no way do I think this is critical listening for anyone LOL. This is coming from an 80's kid who still unironically plays a lot of 80's music. Not sure what the fuss is. I'm assuming they were a much bigger deal in the UK than in the states and so the creators of this list maybe had more nostalgia attached to this or the songs were more cultural touchstones there. For me-- meh Standout tracks: Baked Bean - Like Talking Heads with more horns

If you don't like 60's Psychedelia, you won't like this. I do like 60's Psych so I love this. Of course the title track is the loss-leader to get you in the door and it's great but my favorite here has always been "My Mirage". It's a banger all around and I'm surprised no hip hop act has ever sampled that riff. It's hot and heavy.