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.
