The Wonderful & Frightening World of the Fall

Released

The beginning of the Beggars Banquet era, my favorite period of Fall albums. We’ve got real drummers, Hanley and Scanlon in tandem with Brix, and Mark as mad as ever. It’s a kind of popular music now, in part because John Leckie has always excelled as presenting mayhem as method and can make a song narratively sensible. I think this sounds like a greatest hits album from a much better world. You can absolutely play this one in the car. What’s Mark mad about now! “It’ the Scotch end of the market now,” which I guess is about Orange Juice. “God-box,” conceived in the haze of love, preface by a cassette recording of Mark asking Brix what the song is. When Brix said “We call you Hitler and then kick you around like homogenized milk,” I felt that.

Sasha Frere-Jones

Suggestions
Generic cover

Generic

Flipper
ASS cover

ASS

Schneider TM, Jochen Arbeit, Günter Schickert
Sunbathing Animal cover

Sunbathing Animal

Parquet Courts
Only a Lad cover

Only a Lad

Oingo Boingo
2nd cover

2nd

Agitation Free
Mask cover

Mask

Bauhaus
Back Again in the DHSS cover

Back Again in the DHSS

Half Man Half Biscuit