The Fall: The Unutterable

But it's hard for other musicians to put up with him. Over two dozen instrumentalists have been in and out of the Fall since the release of the Bingo-Master's Break-Out EP in 1977. In 1997, a turbulent American tour culminated in an onstage brawl, leading to Smith's arrest and the revocation of his visa (which means no U.S. tour in the works). In the aftermath, longtime bassist Steve Hanley departed, leaving Smith the band's sole original member.

1998's The Marshall Suite was an inevitable disappointment, as a new crew of backing musicians struggled to fill in for the departed Fall core. Too often, they substituted studio fakery for the organic interaction that characterized the classic Fall sound, and the result was an album of weak originals redeemed mainly by an inspired cover of the obscure trucker-rock nugget "Foldin' Money." Would Smith be able to drag himself and his band back from the brink? For diehard Fall cultists, the wait for The Unutterable has been excruciating.

And worth it. The Unutterable may not equal the visionary intensity of the band's early-'80s masterpieces, but it's the best thing it's done in the past few years—and for a band as consistent and prolific as the Fall that's saying something. The backing band has tightened up its playing and stripped down its sound; the studio gunk that marred Marshall is gone, replaced by meaty, powerful riffs and a bank of clean synths that recall the Fall's rave-transfiguring early-'90s work. And so we get the Fall doing what it's best at: frantic neo-rockabilly ("Hot Runes") and skewed pop ("Cyber Insekt"), fractured electronica dismantling ("Das Katerer") and cryptic literary allusion (the William Blake tribute "WB").

But what's most heartening about The Unutterable is that after all these years, Smith is still committed to pushing the Fall in new directions. Gratifying as it is to hear the Fall return to form, the best tracks on The Unutterable are the experiments; in the quirkily humorous "Pumpkin Soup and Mashed Potatoes," the band even pulls off a convincing jazz-pop track to back Smith's trademark deadpan. In a rare move toward intra-band democracy, Smith even lets newbie guitarist Neville Wilding perform his own composition, a surprisingly catchy garage-rock number called "Hands Up Billy." And "Dr. Buck's Letter" is the album's real high point, a droning, extended track in which Smith's ominous ranting is set to an echoing trip-hop loop of drums and keyboard fuzz that recalls Massive Attack's Mezzanine without sounding forced or derivative. The Fall may never make another Grotesque or Perverted By Language (two utterly essential avant-punk albums), but in today's musical universe, with genres ossifying ever more rapidly into empty, stylized cliches, it's good to know that Smith's still out there, striking yet another blow for idiosyncrasy. (Eagle)

—Nicholas Webb

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