Music Arcades: The Fall: Bend Sinister

I bought all the three Fall albums that came out either side of Bend Sinister as they came out, and In Palace of Swords Reversed to boot. In those days, when you had to be much more choosy in allocating a finite music budget, I decided to give The Fall a bit of a rest and explore some new territory instead.

But Bend Sinister continued to get good notices in reviews and retrospectives, and I do like the mid-late-'80s stuff, so I ordered this from Amazon two and a half years ago, by which time its price had fallen to a very reasonable £4.97.

Early impressions were that I was right the first time. I don't know how many Fall albums there are now, but there must be several that sound like "just another Fall album". I'm sure there are fanatics out there who disagree, but there must be some also-rans, mustn't there. That's how this sounded to me. (By comparison, I recently got Hex Enduction Hour on eMusic, and that's clearly more than just another entry in the catalogue.) I say 'sounded' in the past tense, because there were moments listening to it twice through today when I thought that it might be growing on me. But it's still far from being an established member of the family like The Frenz Experiment.

I don't think I'll be getting that new collection of Fall-related short stories.