Most people probably hate to be known as an asshole. Pablo Picasso was never called one, but I'd bet that The Fall's Mark E. Smith has heard it a few times during the band's 27 year existence. After all, when Mark started out, he originally auditioned for some heavy metal bands only for them to discover that Mark was 1.) tone deaf, and 2.) an asshole. So what's an asshole to do but form his own band and piss off 49 former band members (including 1 ex-wife) to the point where "The Fall" is merely "Mark E. Smith's band this time." Mark, perhaps one of music's greatest songwriters, of course worded it best with a song once that admitted "My friends don't amount to one hand."
Originally called "Country On The Clink," the album was planned for release in April 2003. Somehow, a promotional copy was leaked on the internet, even though the promotional material was clearly labeled: "For promotional use only - anyone abusing this will have Mark E Smith to contend with and may God have mercy on your soul!!!". Being an asshole, MES scrapped the album and remixed the entire project because he said so. To be an even bigger asshole, MES provided English fans with a slightly different version of the album last year before releasing it in America in 2004.
There have been some great Fall albums. There have been some really bad Fall albums. And if you believe that bands typically get a little soft after their first quarter century, you'd probably have a number of examples to back up your hypothesis. But you wouldn't have Mark E. Smith fronting any one of them. He's an asshole like that.
"The Real New Fall LP" is a great Fall album. After a few years of surprising silence, Mark comes across positively renewed and the "new" Fall line-up sounds exactly like they did twenty seven years ago: unlike anything else. The music, the lyrics, it's all remarkable. Proof that even at 46 (he looks much older) Mark has got more left in him than England's newest hitmaker. What keeps him both relevant and off the radio is his satirical rants and uncommon delivery. As John Peel said "They are always different. They are always the same."
Six years ago, it did look like the end. Mark had managed to piss off his (then) band enough to the point where a drunken on-stage fistfight broke out between him and...the rest of the band. The performance continued with Mark's shirt stained with his own blood. After the performance, Mark fired everyone except one individual and continued on the road. Mark even went a step further, perhaps salt on the wound, with the album's song "Portugal" which sounds like the reading an angry letter directed to him, essentially chastising Mr. Smith for his abusive treatment of band members and the crew ("You were abusive, way beyond what anybody should have to reasonably deal with. Words fail me how offensive a human being you are. Treat people as you want to be treated!").
"I hate the countryside so much/ I hate the country folk so much" he barks on "Contraflow," but Smith has always been more of an urban poet rather than some Hibbings, Minnesota troubadour. In 1965, Dylan let out a collective sneer asking a generation "How does it feel?, while MES has made a living with a sneer that seldom asks, yet instead demands that you "Open the goddamn box!" on "Boxoctosis," perhaps the album's most memorable track. And I've yet to hear Dylan rhyme "Dolly Parton" with "Lord Byron."
The coupling comes from the standout track "Mountain," which ranks as one of the greatest Fall songs ever recorded. Nobody in music could come up with a lyric like "So I went fishing, and a note from a fish said: 'Dear Dope: If you want to catch us, you need a rod and a line. Signed, The Fish.'" and make it work. Read the line aloud. Now sing it. Now explain how a guy with, at the most, two monotonic notes in his voice has managed to make a career out of it. Not that MES has gotten rich from his original vision of forming a band with "raw music with really weird vocals over it," but if I could, I'd pay him a King's sum to never change from being different.
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