Have you not yet heard this album? Please mark your calendar “best day ever,” because this is not just the best Fall album, it is the best album of the Eighties, it is the album that will eventually make Bezos cry and accept the spirit world. No? Well, it’s perfectly balanced, then, as there is no perfection. John Leckie was the perfect producer for The Fall, as he didn’t want them to be any more normal, he just wanted them to get on with it and present it loud and clear. Brix was the band member brave enough to write riffs that challenged Mark for attention, which is how we got “L.A.” and “Barmy” and “Cruiser’s Creek,” the masterpiece not technically on this album but usually appended to it in reissues. (Make the drums loud enough and Mark E. Smith instantly becomes a pop star.) The feeling here is bright green plastic forks taped to klieg lights and mailed to the ceiling. “My New House”? They actually got a new house! Who says The Fall are surreal! And “I Am Damo Suzuki” is still, as of April 21 2022, the best Can tribute yet recorded.

– Sasha Frere-Jones