This was my favourite Fall album at the time. It's got a bit of everything I like about them: a couple of good cover version, of which Victoria is exceptional, the best Fall dance song ever (Hit the North), something long and repetitive (Bremen Nacht), and all manner of impenetrable rants about carry bags, East German athletes and Lee Harvey Oswald.
I love the sound and production of the album, which manages to be much 'cleaner' than usual, but you still wouldn't want to eat your dinner off it, if you know what I mean. It's got great little touches like the synthesised percussion that skitters in and out of Guest Informant. The review I read at the time compared the sound to the Richard Rogers architecture of the Beaubourg and Lloyds buildings, with all the service infrastructure showing on the outside — which is a ridiculous and meaningless thing to say about music, but, then again, it's always stuck in my mind, and perhaps it does make an appropriately twisted kind of sense.
The first track, Frenz, fades in wonderfully, so I realised this is the second instance of an album that fades in at the start and fade out at the end, along with Street Legal. Can you think of any more?
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
|
Comments