Tuesday 12 March 2024

Scotty's Fantasy

I do love an indoor festival.  And an indoor festival where you wander between venues, best of all worlds.


BEAM ME UP, Academy & Bully, 10/2/24 

After our seventh full-body pat-down at the doors of The Academy, we rechristen this all-dayer Feel Me Up. But, although we never tried to smuggle anything illicit past the (consistently polite and respectful) security, we often brazenly walked out with a sense of pride at the local talent on display, mostly in the tiny Academy 3, a  corner of the downstairs room hastily screened off as if there had been a horrific incident (well, there had been a Stereophonics tribute the week before). My Crooked Teeth play a lovely set alternating between Don McLean lyricism and straight-up country lamenting, even though an intense light just under Jack’s chin makes it look like he’s going to launch into a ghost story at a scout camp. Eva Gadd looks less demonic, but her versatile jazzy voice sounds just as sweet, and The Bobo takes sees this bet and raises it, unleashing her inner Julee Cruise with a wispy, sultry set accompanied by James Maund from Flights of Helios on guitar; we’d say her voice was smoky, but smoking is bad for you, and this music is balm for any ailment. Johnny Payne unveils a new unnamed trio in the larger upstairs venue, sounding like Joy Division if they enjoyed wholesome roadtrips across the midwest instead of nights drying Manchester drizzle by a two-bar fire. Conversely, Tiger Mendoza plays the small room as if it’s the biggest imaginable, with striking projections and some of their block-rockingest beats. Plus, university band Girl Like That do a sterling job of opening the day at the Bully, playing 90s altrock that’s somewhere between Stone Temple Pilots and The Breeders as if they’d been together twenty years. 

But other acts have travelled from further afield, such as Chroma, who are almost distracted from performing by a certain rugby match because they are “very Welsh” (pity, we hoped they were pun-lovers from the Norfolk coast). Thankfully they manage to focus enough to deliver corking glam-punk fun with greasy riffs, chunky drums, and infectiously cheeky vocals. They pair well with Shelf Lives, whose mix of sassy, insouciant rapping/singing, gnarly guitar and distorted electronics isn’t quite Beyoncé Teenage Riot but comes close to being Gwen Stefani possessed by Peaches. 

Some bands just work despite all the signs being initially bad. Make Friends sound as though they’re shooting for Foals, but hitting Curiosity Killed The Cat, yet their rubbery bass, soft chorus guitar and urbane vocals manage to remind us of Climie Fisher and entertain us enormously, which is surely a victory. Conversely, Blue Bayou look like the full prescription, with soul revue vibes, folky fiddle, crazy Scooby-Doo villain vocals, and brass, but they stall at every hurdle and never manage to lift off, ending up as Dexy’s Tired School-Runners.  

The de-facto headliners today at the Academy are The Rills, who make a perfectly passable fist of being a new rock revolution band from 2001, and more excitingly Deadletter, whose broadly drawn psych rock is something like Spiritualized if the only drug they’d taken was speed, or The Brian Jonestown Massacre, if they’d not taken any drugs at all and had just put more effort in. But the real stars are both at The Bully. Snayx look like Max and Paddy, and sound like a monstrous melange of Soft Play, Idles, and Silver Bullet. They’re delivery is Black Flag brutal, but they charmingly take time out to ensure everyone in the pit is doing OK between numbers. Whilst their drummer is honed and stripped back, like John Bonham playing Run DMC patterns, the bass descends into the filthiest bit-crushed noise we’ve heard in a while. Even better are Home Counties, whose council-estate take on Talking Heads disco and Chicago house we christen GLC Soundsystem, although at one point they groove around a classic rock riff like The Streets doing Thin Lizzy. There’s even a touch of The Blockheads about their most ornery, awkwardly bouncy tracks, but as with Ian Dury, beneath all the winks and sneers there is an undercurrent of melancholy. Turns out, despite all the fun, we go home having felt something...a bit like the Academy bouncers. 

Thursday 7 March 2024

All the Best Last Puns Have Already Been used for Actual James Last Albums, so...

Another strange wee review for my pal Russ's zine. People had to write about their favourite albums of 1985, but when the ones I wanted to do were already taken I got in a huff and did something stupid instead! To be honest, it's not a great piece, I'm trying to justify the whole of my interest in easy listening and review an album in a few hundred words and I don't think I manage to chew everything I've bitten off there. But, it's probably the best James Last review you'll read today.

Oh, and in breaking news, Discogs lists this as released in '86, so it doesn't even fit the brief!  But the sleeve makes it look like it was released in '85.

And in doubly breaking news, this full Last discography says '85, so I think it's OK.  Phew.  www.grandorchestras.com/jlast/albums/jlast-discography-reference.html


JAMES LAST - SWING MIT JAMES LAST (Polydor) 

In the mid-90s, some friends and I would buy old uncool vinyl for pennies, and spin it whilst drinking cheap wine. The decision to listen to music we thought tawdry was conscious and ironic (the decision to drink cheap wine was, however, purely economic). But after a while  doing something you don’t like for the sake of supercilious wryness paled, so we stopped...at which point I realised that I had not been disliking all the music at which I performatively sneered, and started to go back to some – though, dear God, not all – of those cheesy platters. Of all the easy and exotica acts to whom I came back - Kaempfaert, Denny, Alpert – James Last towers over them all, like the Colossus of Rhodes in a spangly jacket. 

In one way I still listen to easy listening ironically, in that I am conscious of the distance from the context and culture in which it was made – this is just as true as when I listen to Renaissance motets or roots reggae. And easy listening can sound odd. It’s perhaps down to the intense primacy melody has, and when arrangements and performance decisions are based wholly on supporting a tune-delivery system, some unusual choices can be made. Sometimes I find this sort of music quite psychedelic, even though it wasn’t the intention of the creators (then again, Victorian children’s illustrators didn’t intend for their work to look trippy to 60s Haight Ashbury stoners, either).  

Swing Mit... is ostensibly a tribute to the big-band sound, as the name implies, although the material comes from a range of sources, from Ellington mainstay Juan Tizol to Romantic composer Offenbach, from jukebox jazz saxophonist Earl Bostic, to no fewer than 3 tracks written by or associated with Huey Lewis & The News for some inexplicable reason.  The album opens with 'Study In Brown', a bona-fide swing classic written by bandleader Larry Clinton, which Last strips down till it's functional and smooth to the point of being undetectable by radar. This could have been the underscore in a round in The Generation Game.  'Perdido' is also a piece of utilitarian swing with some breathy female vocals doubling the horn lines, and buried so deep in the mix you might miss them – this was a common trick of Last’s, possibly because he didn’t want to foreground too many English lyrics for his pan-European consumers – and 'All By Myself' (no, not that one) is a bouncy confection that could have accompanied illusionists at the Palladium. 

But it’s the more unusual selections that stand out. 'Nutcracker' is credited to Peter Hesslein and Frank Jarnach, but this is a blag because it’s a march written by Tchaikovsky, and the arrangement owes a lot to B Bumble & The Stingers’ novelty rock ‘n’ roll version, 'Nut Rocker', but this has a meatier kick drum and some yummy Vangelis synths. 'Who Cares' is a track from Huey Lewis’s debut album (again, don’t ask me why), and whilst it’s one of his better power-pop tracks, this version punches far harder, with sharp horns stabbing ever more wildly above the insistent earthy bass ostinato, with the breathy backing babes intoning the title occasionally. This is tight and infectious, and has at least as much energy as a hundred rediscovered disco cuts now selling for funny money.  The album ends with what may be the best track, 'The Heart Of Rock And Roll' by Huey Lewis (I repeat, what the fuck?), which removes his smug demeanour, burnishes the music to an almost krautrock sleekness, and has the backing ladies deliver fragmentary words and phrases with a strange dub logic. 

This is not the best album of 1985 – that's Steve McQueen, Fables Of The Reconstruction, or Rum, Sodomy And The Lash - and it’s a fair way from being James Last’s best album, which are all from the 70s - but there is music here of a near post-human tightness and directness you’d be hard pressed to find elsewhere in the era. Take a listen...but pick up some half-decent wine. 

Wednesday 7 February 2024

The Final Chow Down

This is an unusual review for two reasons.  Firstly, I've reviewed something incredibly buzzy which is getting yards of column inches, and secondly I think it's pretty damned great. So, here you go, yet another review telling you that this album is ace and the band are awesome...I bet it's the only one to refer to Pauline epistles, mind.


THE LAST DINNER PARTY – PRELUDE TO ECSTASY (Island) 

The Last Dinner Party have not been known, over the past year or so, for reticence. And now, to join their well-stocked wardrobe, bulging book of press cuttings and fast-filling trophy cabinet, they’ve made an album which sounds huge, with an ornate flamboyance decorating pop hooks from the top drawer (of the dressing up box). How many other debut albums open with a full-on overture? This one starts with a lavish orchestral confection, equal parts Gershwin and Shostakovich, with a little hint of golden-age Hollywood glamour. The album’s title is probably not a reference to Steely Dan’s 1973 classic Countdown To Ecstasy, but in some ways The Last Dinner Party resemble Becker and Fagen’s sophistirock outfit, adding curlicues and complexities to popular song forms – although on evidence to date it's clear the former would be more fun to hang out with in the studio. 

Sonically, this album is varied but invariably bold, gesturing camply towards a raft of classic pop styles. 'Burn Alive' is blousy panto goth, 'The Feminine Urge' is pitched on the sturdiest of Spector drum patterns, and 'Caesar On The TV Screen' is blasted epic glam a la Marc Almond and its late 60s soul-pop shuffle could have served Amy Winehouse well (not to mention some gratuitous but delicious timpani rolls). 'Sinner' starts with an insistent piano which Aurora Nishevsky should really perform with a stick-on Ron Mael ‘tache, so readily does it evoke vintage Sparks, but blossoms into a controlled fruitiness with the flavour of Roxy Music’s late – and under-rated – albums. There’s a light Cardigans slinkiness to 'My Lady of Mercy', which suddenly bursts into a Broadway stoner metal chorus – quite fittingly, as the Cardigans were always unabashed Sabbath heads.  

In a blizzard of reference points, the band always sound cohesive, not just a list of educated nods, the music impeccably arranged and with true depth to the writing. Take 'On Our Side', with a tinkling piano, slow stately chords, and a high, yearning vocal line that isn’t far from the Coldplay of 'Fix You', but there are definite differences. Firstly, Coldplay don’t tend to end an epic ballad with an 80-second ambient hug sounding like a windchime being sucked down a cloud tunnel, but also, whereas Chris Martin’s lyrics are almost pathologically generic, where every stone is accompanied by a bone, and anything cold is simultaneously old, this album is incredibly well read, and wears its learning as lightly as the lace frill around a flouncy cuff. Literary and classical allusions are tossed in without smug fanfare. When a song claims of the titular 'Beautiful Boy' that “he launches ships”, we think of Marlowe’s Helen of Troy; when 'The Feminine Urge' proclaims “I am dark red liver stretched out on a rock” the image of Prometheus is raised; and 'Caesar On A TV Screen'’s “When I was a child, I never felt like a child, I felt like an emperor” must have been copped from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthian Girl Bosses.  

The lyrics are consistently port-rich in allusion and emotional drama. Grab words from across the album and you’ll find lust, envy, pray, sin, altar, lust (again) - it’s basically The Best Catholic Guilt Album In The World...Ever! But there is great humour in the writing too, the offhand wit of the playfully bookish. When 'Burn Alive' assures us “there is candlewax melting in my veins” it’s a bohemian thirst trap for sixth-formers existing on a diet of snakebite and Brontë, whereas the wryly bleak yet urbane statement “I'm falling like the leaves in Leningrad” is part Kate Bush, part Mark Corrigan. 

Admittedly, 'Portrait Of A Dead Girl' might have been better served by a rawer recording more in line with the band’s celebrated live shows than the frilly pomp of this version, and one too many slightly blustery guitar solos might have been shoehorned in, but widescreen ambitions should never be criticised, and as Prelude To Ecstasy ends with 'Mirror', a Cheryl Cole torch song with Nick Cave intensity and Bond-theme bombast, you have to conclude that this album is big, and it is clever. 


 

Thursday 1 February 2024

Play This Tape 'Ere

Two reviews in a week at MusicOMH, because of a mix-up with dates.  Even we critical bellwethers have to abide by the calendar, like the drones do.


TAPIR! - THE PILGRIM, THEIR GOD AND THE KING OF MY DECREPIT MOUNTAIN (Heavenly) 

Billy Connolly once observed, “My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell` Overture without thinking of The Lone Ranger”. Listening to 'On A Grassy Knoll (We’ll Bow Together)', the second track on London sextet Tapir!’s debut album, they may be so fey and otherworldly that they are the first people in fifty years to use the phrase “grassy knoll” without thinking of JFK. The album is a collection of three EPs of bucolic, understated indie folk which tell a somewhat inscrutable epic story, and the first of these, 'Act 1 (The Pilgrim)', sets the tone, but lowers the expectations. It opens with some slightly cheesy Americana picking and whistling, before said non-assassination tune adds a hissing drum machine to some wistful folky arrangements to come off part charming, part infuriating – imagine a Canterbury scene band formed by Four Tet, Arab Strap, and Rod, Jane & Freddy. There’s an early Genesis mingling of whimsy and preciousness which doesn’t convince, and the third track, 'Swallow', is what The Simpsons’ Martin Prince and his “Shall I serenade you with my lute?” schtick might become if he spent twenty years hanging out in hipster record shops. Doggerel like “On my way home I caught a swallow/ With broken wings and a face that’s narrow” is half Bright Eyes, half Tom Bombadil, and all pretty naff. 

But thankfully, after these disappointing opening tracks the album improves immensely. Following 'The Nether (Face To Face)', a sweet little lullaby with a strange un-rap chant of “It’s cold, it’s dark/ Throw your bones in the ancient water” as if we’ve stepped into the cosiest little Dagon-worshipping cult in existence, Act 2 begins, delivering some delightful tunes. 'Broken Ark' has a tinny “pok pok” drum machine rhythm as heard on Damon Albarn’s more recent work, nice fuzzy guitar and simple keys. The vocal is quite lovely, more natural and less self-conscious than the cracking high register  of Act 1. A swooning cello gives a delicious Nick Drake flavour. No surprises that a motif is nicked from Erik Satie on 'Gymnopédie', but it’s appended to a sweet, elegant vocal melody, and sounds like a cousin of Mercury Rev’s 'Holes' held together by lolly sticks and Blu Tack. “Jesus had headlice” is an unusual line, though probably historically accurate, and heralds a move away from the fifth-form Arthuriana of the earlier lyrics, until we have the strange collage of slogans on 'My God' (all to a vocal line which is basically 'Young Hearts Run Free', inexplicably). 

'Untitled' is a country-flecked lope, a shy retiring version of The Band, bringing in female vocals to excellent effect, and nodding towards Radiohead with “For a second there I lost my head”. 'Mountain Song' ends the album, claiming “I built myself a mountain made of things I wished I own” like the exact opposite of Björk’s 'Hyperballad', before an extended outro which builds up a single phrase Morricone-style, with trumpet and massed voices. It’s a pleasing end to a rather uneven collection. People often say that the first episode of a sit-com is disappointing, and you should skip to the second, which is exactly the approach we propose for this album. 


 


 


 


 


 

Box for a Pen

There wasn't a January Nightshift, so it seems like forever since I saw this gig.  Luckily, I wrote down what I thought in case I forgot.


PUNCHING SWANS/ SINEWS/ EB, Divine Schism, Library, 7/12/23 

Tonight’s line-up has changed, in more than one way. Having lost two acts from the planned bill, local artist EB has stepped in, but also, EB has metamorphosed something rotten. Gone are the wide-eyed, smiling, pastel beats of a track like ‘La Criox’, and in their place we have excoriating digi-goth noise and lyrics like “Even in death I will not rest”. Between bursts of sonic violence a recording informs us that we’re part of some huge consumer feedback survey which morphs into an evil experiment as the vocal descends from urbane corporate avatar to glitchy screaming imp, which is perturbing, but not as much as EB within spittle-spraying distance of the crowd, howling “you made me hate that song I wrote” repeatedly, like an out of control playground chant over backing that sounds like the devil’s fax playing up. By the time we get to the simulated breakdown and song exploring strangulation revenge fantasies, our memories are gloriously scarred by the experience. 

In other company, Sinews might seem oppressive, but after that psychodrama their neo-hardcore rumble seems positively welcoming even as our ears are left equally battered: imagine a heartfelt hug from someone with an abrasively scratchy sweater and you might capture the balance between friendly warmth and spiky intensity. Fugazi are the reference point that seems most apposite, not because Sinews sound like them, necessarily, but because their music is heavily roiling but with a true sense of beauty within the wasteland, and big, bold lines proving that music doesn’t have to sound like ‘Chelsea Dagger’ to be called anthemic. Tonight they’re launching new single ‘Pony Cure’ which has the thick, scuffed texture of bitumen and old underlay, over which the vocals rasp deliciously, whereas another new tune is a blasted disco trudge, with an excellently rubbery, resilient bass holding it all together. 

Kent’s Punching Swans round off the night with the most approachable set, which is not to say that they aren’t also excellent. Their obscenely tight lopsided rock recalls Mclusky...or perhaps, as the humour is less mordant and more winkingly satirical, we mean Future Of The Left – a line like “A lifetime’s supply of oxygen” leaps from the razor-chopped riffs like the absurd punchline to a gag you didn’t catch, and math-snark sideswipes at third-rate populist culture like ‘Family Misfortunes’, hit the bullseye squarely. The approach is one of cynical weariness, but the playing is supercharged and passionate. 

Tuesday 30 January 2024

Waterwings' Greatest Hits

In case anyone was waiting for the next update, the Fall Cup has moved to the knockout stage, and now uses 100% of our comments, so I won't post any more stuff here.  Seek it out at https://thefallcup.blogspot.com/


BARRY CAN’T SWIM – WHEN WILL WE LAND? (Ninja Tune) 

On the evidence of this debut album, Scottish producer Barry Can’t Swim inhabits a land where it’s always summer (in the “long blissful evenings soundtracked by chilled anthems” sense, rather than the "hideous climate change wasteland” sense). The unhurried grooves on When Will We Land? exude warmth, and whilst they’re not designed to incite dancefloor euphoria, there is certainly a good clutch of serotonin triggers sprinkled across the tracks. The title track typifies the album’s strengths, coming in with forceful cheeriness as chintzy piano weaves round breathy pads like a Philip Glass reimagining of the Windows 95 start-up, whilst the voice asking “What is the mind of God?” carries shades of Orbital’s 'Are We Here?' The whole experience is cardigan-cosy, with some reverby “diva stuck in a culvert” vocals hiding behind unfussily funky drums. 

'Always Get Through To You' has a rough-hewn gospel-soul vibe, tracing a direct line back to earthy, ochre deep house classics like Joe Smooth’s 'Promised Land', and 'I Won’t Let You Down' proffers strings that teeter on the edge of cheesiness, but which are nailed down by some steady, chunky drums, until it begins to sound like a Bizarro World version of Springsteen’s 'Streets Of Philadelphia', where the melancholy has been replaced by fuzzy optimism. The naively bouncy 'Sonder' might have been constructed using Fisher Price’s My First Garage Rhythm – a good thing, in case that’s not obvious – and makes use of some non-Anglophone samples which may remind aging ravers of chill-outs and come-downs in the company of Enigma, and similarly a slightly wobbly vocal stumbles above a smiley skipping noughties beat, coming off like a genial, avuncular version of Burial: less 'Night Bus', more 'Chatting To Old Ladies In The Number 47 Queue'. Speaking of public transport, 'Deadbeat Gospel' is the album’s most intriguingly leftfield track, with what sounds like a field recording of a chirpy half-cut chap dropping a boho spiritual rap to his peers in the late-night taxi rank queue, whilst some strafed vocals are reminiscent of Age Of Love’s eponymous trance monster. 

All of this is pretty joyous, and the only real criticism of When Will We Land? is that certain sounds and techniques pop up repeatedly. It’s often useful for artists to limit their palette, but one might begin to feel déjà vu from the descending piano lines, fragmented aahs and oohs, and artfully placed world music samples. Barry Can’t Swim, but just occasionally, he's been known to coast. 

Tuesday 26 December 2023

Fall Again. Fall Better.

Round 2 of the Fall Cup has now finished, and we are into the knockout stages.  Check out the story to date at The Fall Cup if you a) know lots of Fall tracks, and b) want to be annoyed that we don't like the same Fall tracks you do.

Once again, I've decided to share all the comments I made.  This time, the voting was complex, and we were able to distribute a total score bank between 12 tracks each match, but I just commented on the 5 tracks to whom I'd given the lowest score each match, so that the process was in line with round 1; the difference, of course, is that I was giving low marks to more tracks that I actively enjoy, so there are fewer snide put-downs, and therefore more abstract flights of critical fancy.  As with Round 1, it's interesting to see how many times I repeated myself over the weeks - sorry.


The Birmingham School of Business School: A lead-footed funk number with one of Smith's most deliberately ugly vocal noises at the start  ("Mum, can we have wah-wah guitar?", "Oh, no we have wah-wah at home").  

Youwanner: Relentless yet building in intensity, like being trapped in the engine room of a rickety ship at full steam, cogs and sprockets flying off at all angles. 

Victoria Train Station Massacre/ New Facts Emerge: Like the novel Cujo if it had been glam rock that had gone rabid.

Arms Control Poseur: A guardedly wary shimmy, marred by hideous guitar scribbles.

ROD: Eeriness from the dressing-up box, not the heart of terror.

Can Can Summer: Beautifully twitchy, a Talking Heads for those who prefer brown ale to cappuccino.

I Feel Voxish: Peak Shanley insistence plus MES as inscrutable life coach.

Petty (Thief) Lout: Crepuscular, if not spectacular.

Das Vulture Ans Ein Nutter-Wain: Unidentifiable fragments of matter floating in a greasy ramen.

YFOC/ Slippy Floor: The sound is great on the LP version, but the final band did one or two too many of these anonymous unriffs.

Two Librans: A lumbering dyspeptic churn of a song.

Copped It: Love the way the serrated guitar vies for space with the huge rolling bass.

Sons Of Temperance: There's a lovely furry mould growing around the low end, but the song itself is an indie chant by rote.

Rainmaster: A fun, but ultimately inconsequential, rectilinear stomp.

Amorator!: Another with a brilliant sound, like a transcription of a long uncertain growl from a tipsy dog, but there's not quite enough musical material here for me.

Barmy: It should be illegal to rhyme barmy with army, especially if you've already doen it in a different song.  Good Velvety pounding track, though.

The Aphid: It's pretty much Rainmaster with extra pep, isn't it?  Decent, but nobody's conception of the greatest Fall song, one suspects.

Coach & Horses: A rather charming miniature, better than many of the longer and more imposing tracks on RPTLC.

Pacifying Joint: That dumbass keyboard line can be pretty annoying if youre not in the mood.

Over! Over!: Everything about this sounds forced, it's a hothouse bloom, and withers under scrutiny.

All Leave Cancelled: Fungus growing rampant on a folk rock tune, or perhaps a possessed R.E.M. song.  Sometimes more fascinating than good, but proof that Fall Sound is more than krautabilly.

Bombast: This is possibly the twentieth-century Fall track that most anticipates final line-up Fall.  A great noise, with one of Shanley's heaviest anchors.  Still maintain "bombast" doesn't make sense as a synonym for "tirade", mind.

I Wake Up In The City: In the inevitable comparison, Classmates' Kids has better lyrics, and this has a much better forward-leaning performance.  There's not enough of it to get many points, but it still deserves a nod.

Cosmos 7: One of the tracks for which the illogical mixing of EGB works in its favour, it does sound like a broadcast picked up by a 60s cosmonaut.

My Door Is Never: I have officially run out ways to say that it's sad that a band as good as the dudes made such an undercooked album.

Backdrop: It's Wings: The Opera.  Some amazing lines, though the gin couplet always felt a bit facile.

Cab It Up!: That synglock line is so much fun, it sounds like something from a Ronnie Hazelhurst sit-com theme.

Dktr Faustus: A lot of the criticism directed towards Brix seems to be unfair enough to border on misogyny, but I have to say her vocals spoil this track.  Banana, yourself!

Contraflow: My wife always says this sounds like Rage Against The Machine.  Not sure I agree, and I like it a lot, but it will never be more than an album track.

OFYC Showcase: The album version has an excellent sound - perhaps those Domino studio types weren't such a chain around the neck as has been reported - but there's still not enough of it for me to love.

Junger Cloth: The words are great - Yog-Sothoth gets an eye test - but the music plods somewhat.

Carry Bag Man: Middle-tier Fall in every respect.

Guest Informant: We spent so many years trying to make out that "Bazdad" bit we didn't notice how annoying that "Bazdad" bit was.  The rest of the song's good.

Cruiser's Creek: Big chunky Duplo blocks of musical material laid out far into the distance.

No Respects: MES in catarrh hero mode, band set to "forgettable".

Elves: If you can ignore the Stooges larceny, this is a great song; but you can't, can you.

Pine Leaves: 90s Fall had some wonderful moments of quantised melancholy.

Impression of J Temperance: This song is so strong, that I'm always let down that it concludes "ha, he fucked a dog, mate".

Oxymoron: In some ways it would be perfect if a bashed out thump featuring vocal samples from another song won the cup.  Smash the canon, destroy hegemonies! Amuse our friends, enrage your enemies!  Sorry, where was I?  Oh, this track - it's OK, I suppose.

Second House Now: Forceful, but nondescript rock.

Gross Chapel-British Grenadiers: The murky, photocopied-newsprint texture is wonderful, but it may not need to last for over 7 minutes.

The Chiselers: Cracks along like a funicular railway at the highest setting - loses points because we didn't really need so many versions where the same sections are just shuffled into different orders.

Black Monk Theme Part I: One can't really improve on The Monks, but the dizzying fiddle encompassing Mark's deadpan vocals is a nice touch.

Brillo De Facto: Excellent vox on this one, a superb example of the late MES strangle-gurgle delivery, and tightly played, but the riff doesn't stand out from the crowd.

The Crying Marshall: A gold-plated example of a track that works excellently on its album, but feels featherlight in isolation.

50 Year Old Man: The epic collage album version is great, but I've docked points for some live versions that just bludgeon the joy out of it (the From The Basement performance is excellent though).

Mountain Energei: A gorgeous repurposing of The Passenger, for which I wish I had more points.

Words Of Expectation: An example of true krautrock discipline, I would just prefer it without the wormy section - and the lyric dissing Leicester Poly is pretty unadventurous.

Cyber Insekt: The atonal Ballroom Blitz trundle of the album version is glorious, but again, this is a track that got smoothed out and bleached in live performances until there wasn't much left to get excited about.

Solicitor In Studio: Some good lines, and a nice tortured glam feel to the music, but it lacks the cohesion and power of so much other 1982 material.

Various Times: A jaundiced travelogue through the twentieth century.

What You Need: Riff, list, and chant, the three main ingredients for a Fall song - but perhaps this track needs another flavour to be one of the greats.

Gut Of The Quantifier: The gruppe as funk revue.

Fall Sound: Some choice lines and delivery, but arguably the music is too on the nose, Fall-soundwise.

Ol' Gang: Way to ruin a glorious dirty groove, Smith.

Look, Know: The most lumbering lifestyle tips in history.

Gibbus Gibson: A cheeky Monkees-flavoured bit of bounce.

Joker Hysterical Face: Ramshackle and untethered.

Deadbeat Descendant: Played with passion and vim, but the riff is frustratingly uninspiring.

Jam Song: This is so nearly very good, but falters at the gate.  Maybe stop jamming and start honing?

Janet, Johnny & James: That good ol' boy clawhammer riff just keeps on scuttling.

Crop Dust: A texture so loamy enough Percy Thrower is probably the studio engineer.

My New House: It's the layers of detuned guitars that make this track.

Reformation!: Blindness without the shimmy.  Worked live, but isn't an essential Fall document.

Wolf Kidult Man: A functional thump, arguably, though an effective one.

The Quartet Of Doc Shanley: Steal a bassline, turn up the distortion, cut up some spoken nonsense, go down the pub.

Fiery Jack: A fantastic piece of CnN that I may have worn the sheen off on first discovery.

Jim's "The Fall": If Mudhoney were bewildered wasps at the end of the summer, they might make music like this.

Auto Tech Pilot: Played with boxing gloves on, but none the worse for that.

Auto Chip 2014-2016: I'm not sue why I don't love this as so many other people do: I like The Fall, I like Neu!, what am I missing?

Gramme Friday: Blues rock fractured, dispersed, and awkwardly reassembled.

The Remainderer: The grimy gurgle of a bath full of custard emptying in 4/4.

Sinister Waltz: The whispering of a guilty conscience in 3/4.

And This Day: Imposing and brutal, but - whisper it - too long.

Tommy Shooter: A gloriously sleek and honed band working through threadbare material.

Fol De Rol: Ludic and malevolent in equal measure.

Powder Keg: Sounds like a traffic jam made into pop music.

Loadstones: A good song, but it also sounds like The Oysterband.

(Jung Nev's) Antidotes: I love the cement-mixer churn, and regret that there aren't more points laying about for this one.

Sir William Wray: Throwaway by design, it seems that giving it points would be against the spirit, fun though it is to listen to.