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Rating:
The Fall are (we're talking about '79) one of the most important bands of the new wave, properly understood as post-punk. Starting from a "kraut 'n' roll," they then drift towards purely "pop" influences... this LP is meant to be a watershed between the two periods. It comes right after "Dragnet," which is considered their masterpiece, and perhaps for this reason, it is overlooked. But upon listening, there are truly original ideas and even more experimental than their previous records...
The record opens with "Pay Your Rates", which begins as a battle-ready punk rock only to become (after a few seconds???) a sort of putrescent and noise-driven declamation, and Mark E. Smith is like a kind of Bob Dylan from the afterlife. Then it moves to "English Scheme," a cheerful pop punk "anthem" that might remind one of the Wire's "Pink Flag".... however, it's a piece neither here nor there... but it's with "New Face In Hell" that Mark unleashes... on a noise base that could be related to the no wave, he declaims nonsense verses with strange noises and plenty of excitement...
Instead, it's the piece "C'N'C-S Mithering" that makes the record take off: a steady beat... almost metronomic... guitar arpeggios, Mark's voice filtered and declaiming... the piece lasts almost 8 minutes and it could be said that it never changes and so might seem boring if one doesn't have an ear for certain sound solutions, but it's precisely in pieces like these where Smith's dadaist "slam poetry" is revealed. "Impression of J Temperance" remains on the same line as "Mithering," but ends up being even more prolix and boring (it also gives a headache, by the way) the whole record stays on this line.... if the first part maintained an innovative and anti-traditional approach, the second indeed keeps this style.. but in a more chaotic way and above all not memorable... what can I say?
A classic transitional record... after all, the Fall have accustomed and will continue to accustom us to far other things.
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 Pay Your Rates (03:00)
Pay your rates
Pay your water rates
Pay your rates
Pay your water rates
If your rates too high
Write a snotty letter
If your rates too high
Put your life on this bit of paper
Advice on rates
Advice on rates
Pay your rates
Pay your water rates
Pay your rates
Pay your water rates
If your rates too high
You'd better sign this letter
If you don't pay your rates
You're gonna end up here
Or end up on debtors' retreat estate
Or debtors' retreat escape
Debtors' escape estate
Debtors' escape
Debtors' retreat escape
Debtors' retreat estate
Neuroticred landscape
A socialist state invention
The old government bones working
[Legendary Chaos tape:
Let's hear it for the working class traitors
Hello Warren Mitchell]
Debtors' escape estate
Debtors' retreat estate
A no-motivation estate
Debtors' escape estate
Pay the borough
Pay the borough
Pay your rates
Pay pretty sharp
Pay the borough
Pay the borough
Pay the borough
Pay your rates
Pay your water rates
Pay your rates
Pay your rates
02 English Scheme (01:55)
O'er grassy dale, and lowland scene
Come see, come hear, the English Scheme.
The lower-class, want brass, bad chests, scrounge fags.
The clever ones tend to emigrate
Like your psychotic big brother, who left home
For jobs in Holland, Munich, Rome
He's thick but he struck it rich, switch
The commune crap, camp bop, middle-class, flip-flop
Guess that's why they end up in bands
He's the green piece in us all
He's the creep-creep in us all
Condescends to black men
Very nice to them
They talk of Chile while driving through Haslingdon
You got sixty hour weeks, and stone stone toilet back-gardens
Peter Cook's jokes, bad dope, check shirts, lousy groups
Point their fingers at America
Down pokey quaint streets in Cambridge
Cycles our distant spastic heritage
Its a gay red, roundhead, army career, grim head
If we was smart we'd emigrate.
03 New Face In Hell (05:37)
Wireless enthusiast intercepts government secret radio band and
uncovers secrets and scandals of deceitful type proportions.
Aghast goes next door to his neighbor, secretly excited, as
aforementioned was a hunter whom radio enthusiast wanted
friendship and favor of.
A new face in hell
Nearly a new face in hell!
A muscular, thick-skinned, slit-eyed neighbor is at the table
poisoned just thirty seconds before by parties who knew of
wireless operator's forthcoming revelation.
A new face in hell!
A prickly line of sweat covers enthusiast's forehead as the
realization hits him that the same government him and his now
dead neighbor voted for and backed and talked of on cream porches
have tricked him into their war against the people who enthusiast
and dead hunter would have wished torture on. A servant of
government walks in and arrests wireless fan in
kitchen for murder of his neighbor
A new face in hell!
The dead cannot contradict
Sometimes the living cannot
A new face in hell!
04 C'n'C-S Mithering (07:36)
Three days
Three months
Three days
Three months
A treatise
A treatise
To explain these
First was cash 'n' carry house dance
In Lancashire they're A
In King Nat Ltd. empire
Kwik Save is there
The scene started here
Then was America
Then was America
We went there
Big A&M Herb was there**
His offices had fresh air
But his rota was mediocre
US purge, rock 'n' pop filth
Their material's filched
And the secret of their lives
Is...
All the English groups
Act like peasants with free milk
On a route
On a route to the loot
To candy mountain
Five wacky English proletariat idiots
Californians always think of sex
Or think of death
Five hundred girl deaths
A Mexico revenge, it's stolen land
They really get it off on
"Don't hurt me please"
Rapist fill the TVs
And the secret of their lives
Is S.E.X..
I have dreams, I can see
Carloads of negro Nazis
Like Faust with beards
Hydrochloric shaved weirds
[Applause from audience at Cyprus Tavern ]
This was going to be called crap rap fourteen,
but it's now Stop Mithering.
The things that drain you off and drive you off the hinge.
Boils, dirty socks, the ceilings collapse.
The Sunday morning loud lawn mower,
the upstairs Jewish girl damn hoovering, with valium cig
withdrawal.
She wants communal, fluent flat household.
I want privacy.
The bastard dentist doctors surgery,
Clip, clop, ring, knock, ring
Stop mithering***
The estates stick up like stacks
The estates stick up like stacks
The residents keep wild dogs
And on that father's bedroom closet top,
electric blanket boxes
Surplus jonnies, demob pictures
To their children they sing
Stop mithering
You think you've got it bad with thin ties,
miserable songs synthesized, or circles with A in the middle.
Make joke records, hang out with Gary Bushell,
Join round table. "I like your single yer great!"
A circle of low IQ's.
There are three rules of audience.
My journalist acquaintances, go soft, go places,
on record company expenses.
I lose humor, manners become bog writers, don't know it.
The smart hedonists, same as last verse, allusions with
H in electronics, on stage false histrionics,
Corpse mauling dicks, pose to a good film, him, him
Stop mithering
I'm not joining conventional rock band.
The conventional is experimental, the conventional is now
experimental,
And is no way noble, and I'm no chock stock thing.
So stop mithering.
Engineers save up for cars.
I try to let down their tyres with matches to make them molten.
Ouch! Ouch!
They say I rip off Johnny Rotten
They always strike for more pay.
They say "See yer mate..Yeh...see yer mate"
To their mothers they sing
Stop mithering
Even the drowned penile tissue test.
He hangs out for sex.
He enters magazine contest.
White tan horror in the mirror.
Spotty exterior hides a spotty interior.
He's not your enemy.
He's not your enemy, his name is not Harry.
The secret of Cash and Carry.
05 The Container Drivers (03:06)
Net cap. of 58 thousand pounds
They sweat on their way down
Grey ports with customs bastards
Hang around like clowns the
Uh-containers and their drivers
Bad indigestion
Bad bowel retention
Speed for their wages
Suntan, torn short sleeves
Look at a car park for two days
Look at a grey port for two days
Train line, stone and grey
This is not their town
Big cigars come out of the ground
Sweat on their way down
F. Jack's a distant relation
Communists are just part time workers
And there's no thanks
From the loading bay ranks
Look at a car park for two days
Look at a grey port for two days
Train line, stone and grey
RO-RO roll on roll off
The container drivers
Speed for their wages
Uh-containers
Uh-and their drivers
06 Impression of J. Temperance (04:19)
Hate wide for dog breeder
in the town of purport
A never seen dog breeder
This is the tale of his replica.
Name was J. Temperance
Only two did not hate him
Because peasants fear local indifference
Pet shop and the vet, Cameron.
One night vet is called out
from his overpaid leisure
To Temperance household, delivered ran out
and phoned his wife in terror.
The next bit is hard to relate.
(There are no read-outs for this part of the track.)
The new born thing hard to describe
Like a rat that's been trapped inside
A warehouse base, near a city tide
Brown sockets, purple eyes
And fed with rubbish from disposal barges brown and covered
No changeling,
as the birth was witnessed.
Only one person could do this:
"Yes" said Cameron
"and the thing was in the
impression of J. Temperance."
His hideous replica.
Scrutinise the little monster
Disappeared through the door
His hideous replica
09 Gramme Friday (03:18)
The people I like live
in kitchens and halls.
I can't reach a decision on this.
Can I come back to you on this?
Hitler lost his nerve on it.
Dr. Morel prescribed it well
It's fast debts.
I am Robertson Speedo
and this is my Gramme Friday.
Skin drops slow to the bones
But I've got my hunger anyway.
I'm on Gramme Friday.
Work and eat spontaneous
Enter the house of weariness.
It's Fastnet
Look out
Look down
Look out
Look now
The hunger....
Friday .
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