The Fall Your Future, Our Clutter (Domino)
3/5
By: Matt Tomiak
Grizzled insurrectionary US rap-rockers Rage Against The Machine and their legion of fans would have you believe that their triumphant campaign to take sweary signature anthem ‘Killing In The Name’ to the UK Christmas Number One spot combined with last week's huge celebratory outdoor London summer gig stuck it to Simon Cowell and his soulless manufactured pop conveyer belt good and proper. But for a genuinely subversive manipulation of the form, The Fall's unlikely career trajectory takes some beating.
Indie bands often make proud declarations about how their defiantly non-airbrushed, rough-around-the-edges authenticity would guarantee immediate failure at the first round of auditions on The X Factor, but the Prestwich veterans' 28th album (!) would be sure to have Walsh, Minogue, Cole et al trembling behind the judges’ sofa.
Band mainstay Mark E. Smith turned fifty a couple of years ago but shows no signs of mellowing, most memorably on this occasion via the rasping nuts-and-bolts garage punk of ‘Bury Pts 1+3’, an ode to provincial towns based around Smith’s sneering references to ‘municipal buildings’ and the largely impenetrable, reverb-soaked galloping surf rocker ‘Cowboy George’. It's very probably a scathing satire on American neo-imperialism, but Smith's growled references to ‘unseen footage and unseen facts’ lend it an enigmatic mystique.
Artists in this article: The Fall
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