This Nation's Saving Grace - The Fall (1985)

Ideated from: The Fives, releases from years ending in 5. Haven’t done this in a while.

You find people who really love this band. They all seem to write for the British music press, which distorts the picture a bit. But whatever.

The music here is dead simple: surf-informed garage punk with an edge of noisy production. The lyrics, despite Mark E Smith generally being seen as brilliant (by the people mentioned above, anyway) just baffle me.

I guess if you get jokes about London punk culture in 1985 it might mean more to you.

Lyrics consisting of a single phrase shouted over and over again ad nauseum get to be grating pretty quickly. TBF when Husker Du shouts the same phrase over and over again (from the same year, no less) I love it. But they also have some very cerebral lyrics to offset it.

The Fall are notable mostly because of their longevity, and the fact that people still talked about their new records decades after they weren’t really in the limelight anymore.

Damning with faint praise, I guess; but I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I was hoping I would.