Eggs, Rated

Not so long ago, I listened to all The Fall's studio albums (and a couple of gray area 10" records), one every 2 days, to identify a league table.  Sadly, this is now definitive.  MES gets a little propr in this review, too.

Slates
The Infotainment Scan
Perverted By Language
This Nation’s Saving Grace
Hex Enduction Hour
The Unutterable
Live At The Witch Trials
Your Future Our Clutter
I Am Kurious Oranj
Grotesque
The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country On The Click)
Levitate
The Wonderful & Frightening World Of The Fall
New Facts Emerge
Extricate
Fall Heads Roll
The Remainderer
Sub-Lingual Tablet
Room To Live
Imperial Wax Solvent
The Light User Syndrome
Dragnet
The Frenz Experiment
Middle Class Revolt
Re-Mit
The Marshall Suite
Cerebral Caustic
Code:Selfish
Shift-Work
Bend Sinister
Reformation Post TLC
Ersatz GB
Are You Are Missing Winner

THE LOVELY EGGS/ PORKY THE POET, Future Perfect, Cellar, 15/2/18

Orwell’s 1984 was published 35 years in advance of the year it predicted; it’s only months until we’re the same distance the other side.  Similarly, Porky The Poet’s piece “They’ve All Grown Up In The Beano” is now nearly as old as that venerable schoolyard staple was when he wrote it.  If his script is you and me, Time likes to shove in a little call-back gag every now and then.  Ironically, whilst Time has had no debilitating effect on Phil Jupitus’s comedy skills despite the vintage of some of his material - the initials SPG and DHSS will be as meaningless to your average gig-goer as tape-to-tape dubbing or MS-DOS commands – the poet has become visibly less porky.  That Time, he gets you one way or another.

We’ve seen The Lovely Eggs a fair few times in Oxford since the first, a decade ago opening at The Wheatsheaf, and the turnout has steadily grown until this, a richly deserved Cellar sell-out.  Time, of course, is waiting in the wings to take the edge off, and maybe larger crowds have pushed the band towards beery singalongs and reduced dynamics (or perhaps it’s the other way round).  Whilst we may never again witness a wistful skip through “Oh, The Stars” or a grinning lope through “Watermelons”, that’s a small price to pay for a packed room led in a lusty chorus of “Fuck It” by what looks like a pair of kids’ TV presenters gone feral (they’ve all grown up on Blue Peter, and it went brilliantly wrong).  Despite one or two punky thumpers that aren’t hugely memorable, The Lovely Eggs still have a uniquely British take on shabby psychedelia, “Magic Onion” especially sounding like a Monkees song repurposed as a skipping rhyme by absurdist urchins.  The sneering spirit of Mark E Smith seems to have inhabited Holly Ross on newer songs like “I Shouldn’t Have Said That”, and his death reminds us that one day even the most driven originals will leave the stage, so don’t miss out the next time The Lovely Eggs come to town, and indeed keep ensuring capacity crowds at The Cellar, and other small venues, lest you live to regret it.  Meanwhile, Time takes a cigarette, but now has to slink out to the alleyway to smoke it.  Even he’s not immune to change.  So all togther now, fuck it, oh yeah.