Fall - The Weltanschauung of the Middle Class

It all begins with the Flemish, and a pragmatic mind that recognized, in a breast-shaped hill, the ideal ground for growing cotton and flax. The rest is a slide into the dreary fate of an industrial city, prey, in its most critical phase, to a working class proud of its deep-seated vices: alcohol, depression, post-partum breakdowns, pub gossip, hatred of the middle class, working-class devotion to a football team, and the crushing weight of an aesthetic flair that never rises above the austerity of a heavy work jacket.

Walking along the docks in late-1970s Manchester could be, depending on your point of view, a demoralizing experience, but also, at the same time, a critical stimulus against a dust-choked system, where the full spectrum of color could only ever be glimpsed in shades of grey.

A paradoxical socio-economic system, stripped to the bone, down to its secondary needs. A grid flattened out in a miserable sameness, in which the middle generations, if blessed with a slightly broader eye, dilated by some narcotic or other, could look in from the outside at the gloomy fabric of things, annihilated by devotion to the factory and by a drab existence, light years away from the overflowing frivolity of nearby London and of the world.

In that land where the process of alienation could, for most people, become a source of underground malaise, unconscious and silenced by a monotonous but comforting rhythm of daily routine, for others that same alienation became raw material for observation and inspiration.

The underground multitude could choose the path of tragedy, perfectly embodied, in its most valuable expression, by Ian Curtis, or the androgynous metamorphosis of Howard Devoto, or a form of grotesque, prickly cynicism perfectly embodied by Mark E. Smith.

Mark is totally wired (1976-1985)

In 1976 Mark E. Smith, a gaunt and seemingly harmless 19-year-old working the shipping desk of an import-export firm down at the docks, found in Doors, Velvet Underground, Stooges and Can a higher purpose than an existence that would otherwise have peaked in a slightly more respectable shade of upper-working-class life. Crossing the line between the ecstasy of listening and the active will to create, he recruited Martin Bramah on guitar, Tony Friel on bass and a certain Dave/Steve, of unknown identity, on drums. With this line-up, christened "The Fall" after the Albert Camus novel, the band gave their first live performance at the North West Arts Basement in Manchester in May 1977.

The second live show, at Manchester's Squat Club, marked the arrival of Una Baines, Smith's girlfriend, on keyboards, along with new drummer Karl Burns.

The band's first two years, marked by a constant turnover of new bassists and keyboard players, nonetheless managed to produce the singles "Bingo-Master's Break-Out!" and "It's The New Thing", seminal works born of a kind of nervous, accelerated chaos, aimed at an audience of misfits squandering their lives in the recesses of a fiercely niche culture, fired up by amphetamines, class consciousness, and a watchful, active strain of nihilism. One could call it garage rock or post-punk in its roughest forms, but the keyboard kept the band's singular melodic streak safe from the overused cliché of sonic chaos - the sound of what was shaping up to be a cult band, from the very start the antagonist to the other side of the coin in late-70s Manchester. Where metal drew its charisma from its own coldness, bending but losing the fight, and giving in to it with fatalism in Joy Division, by contrast, that delirium of nerves that made up the Fall's human and sonic fabric completed the picture, carving out new forms in an exhausting but ultimately positive struggle.

After two Peel Sessions and a concert in the north of England, March 1979 saw the release, on Step Forward, of the first album, Live At Wich Trials, featuring Marc Riley on bass and Yvonne Pawlett on keyboards, even though the credits for some tracks still list Friel and Baines.

The tone is quite moody throughout, marked as much by the underlying paranoia of the intro "Frightened" as by the Stranglers-style swagger of "Rebellious Jukebox", the unbridled violence of "No Xmas for John Quays" and the hyper-accelerated bursts of "Underground Medicine" and "Future Pasts", passing through the spoken-word interlude of "Live at Wich Trials", right up to the sarcastic closer "Music Scene".

Preceded by the single "Rowche Rumble", a delirious piece of punk-funk, October 1979 saw the release of Dragnet, the first studio album, with Riley moving from bass to guitar and the addition of Craig Scanlon on second guitar and Steve Hanley on bass.

Dragnet seems built on a will to experiment and let itself be seduced by more hypnotic sounds, generating moments of rough psychobilly ("A Figure Walks", "Before the Moon Falls", "Muzorewi's Daughter"), alternating with a twisted, jittery garage sound ("Psykick Dancehall", "Dice Man", "Your Heart Out", "Choc Stock"), before closing out with a tribute to the most obsessive strain of no wave on "Spectre Reactor".

A spectacle of such exuberant genuineness could hardly escape a figure with such selective taste as Mayo Thompson, who in January 1980 produced the single "Fiery Jack", still for Step Forward, but which paved the way for the band's entry into the coveted Rough Trade roster - a move marked by the live album Totale's Turns (It's Now Or Never), and by the singles pulled from the following studio work, How I Wrote Elastic Man, "City Hobgoblins" and "Totally Wired". The infected cells of this tipsy, ferocious little theatre lodge themselves in the Gang of Four-style satire of "City Hobgoblins" and in the manifesto of neurosis signed, sealed and delivered by "Totally Wired".

Grotesque came out at the end of 1980, and announced itself as gloriously explosive material. With the keyboards gone, Smith amused himself playing with tapes and kazoo, giving the album the atmosphere of a working-class pub turned upside down by a crooked jam session of pseudo-musicians, factory workers, squatters and misfits of every stripe ("Pay Your Rates" and "New Face in Hell"). The sinister voodoobilly of "C'N'C - S Mithering" then dissolves into the carefree alt-country of "Container Drivers", before boiling over again on "In The Park". The nod to no wave returns with the deforming monotony of "Gramme Friday", played in a DNA-like style, and in the sullen mood underlying the closing track ("The NWRA").

The happy partnership with Rough Trade continued in 1981 with the release of Slates, a brisk 10", bolstered by the backing vocals of Kay Carroll and Dave Tucker, also on kazoo and clarinet respectively. Six tracks of warped frenzy, punctuated by a bassline that seems to be constantly biting its own tail ("An Older Lover"), by wild rides through rush-hour city traffic ("Fit and Working Again"), and by proclamations barked out over a vocoder-treated pseudo-beat ("Slates, Slugs, Etc.."), followed by a US tour.

1981 also saw, on Step Forward, the release of the Fall's first compilation, Early Years 77-79, and of the single "Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul", produced by the far-sighted Richard Mazda, another pillar of the independent scene, on the little-known Kamera label.

The relationship with Mazda isn't reduced to the mere production of a single, but takes concrete shape in the album Hex Enduction Hour, a work that marks the turning point towards an ambition that's no longer just localist (also evidenced by the American tour) or geopolitically aimed at "kicking up a fuss" and loosening the bolts of a society (Manchester's) crusted over with the rust of an economic vocation that had almost been imposed by force.

Hex Enduction Hour is a brilliant album, consistent with Smith's borderline identity, dense with little sketches raised against a society destined to smash its head against its own reinforced concrete walls, but at the same time it sounds like a more self-aware, and consequently more disciplined, work, even within its own inspired chaos.

"The Classical" is yet another invective against a prim and proper past built on stereotypes swollen with vain hormones, completely rejected by a sonic body that advances with percussive assurance, the same tribal energy with which Kay Carroll seals the album in the closing "And This Day". The love of cynicism continues in the slow ecclesiastical parody of "Hip Priest", a pretext for unleashing a sinister voodoobilly sound that sounds like the skeleton of the Cramps seen under X-rays. A little keyboard introduces the spastic vocal tone of "Fortress/Deer Park", whose opening reference to Nazism then continues in "Who Makes The Nazis?", becoming a heavy accusation against the worst vices of men who seem entirely respectable but are ready for pedophilic sodomy, consummated amid the grunts of obese pigs, in the squalor of a motel. The ability to absorb the humus of ancient border lands flows into the folky opening of "Iceland", a hallucinated vignette of a land that is surprisingly psychedelic, both physically and socially.

After the live album A Part Of America Therein, in the summer of 1982, on Kamera, the Fall's sixth studio album came out, Room To Live (Undilutable Slang Truth!). Seven tracks born from a session that, initially meant to record just one song, became, by Smith's own will, a work of brief yet intense originality: from the faithfulness to a shambolic post-punk line in "Joker Hysterical Face", in which Riley's guitar appears for the last time (after the tour of Australia and New Zealand he would leave the band), to the thoroughly improbable mixture of "Marquis Cha Cha", a divertissement of a Kid Creole who, without stage costumes and backing dancers, exercises his pipes within domestic walls, passing through the velocity of the title track, all the way to the suspense of a b-movie detective story in the bare, muffled "Detective Instinct" and the creaking industrial sound, a black-and-white Super 8 soundtrack, of "Papal Visit".

What happens at the end of 1983, following the release of the singles "The Man Whose Head Expanded", "Kicker Conspiracy/Wings" and "Marquis Cha-Cha", besides marking a rekindling of Rough Trade's interest in the band, is perhaps the band's consecration in the eyes of a critical establishment no longer made up solely of obscure trade insiders. When John Peel hears "Eat Y'self Fitter", the opening track of Perverted by Language, he doesn't hesitate to call it one of the records he'd take with him to a desert island.

The Fall's ability to evolve without losing their identity is evidenced by the construction of powerful sonic scaffolding, held up by a rhythm section that's always thick and electrified, by a weave of nerves and melody bordering on psychic jolts ("Garden"), by the surprising ability to anticipate certain shoegaze sounds through a gentler use of guitar and the addition of a female voice, that of Brix Smith, Mark's wife, in what we might call a strange, fascinating post-punk ballad ("Hotel Bloedel"), by the return to the roots of something that could never be packaged as a simple song-format, but a real ars oratoria, cynical, altered, at times ferocious, demented, drunk, enraged, typical of a spirit that is above all restless, but also free, in its perpetual, sharp invective ("Tempo House"), an invective slightly softened in the more relaxed closing track ("Hexen Definitive/Strife Knot"), despite a certain underlying tension, the band's trademark.

In 1984, preceded by the two singles "Oh! Brother" and "c.r.e.e.p.", which, that same year, would complete the longer cassette version, came the album The Wonderful And Frightening World Of The Fall, which sealed the marriage with Beggars Banquet and the subsequent, definitive departure of Paul Hanley, thus ending the "double drummer" period. A return to rock'n'roll, to the flames of a fire blazing in a basement and put out with the very sweat of a crowd gone wild dancing, percussive deflagration, nihilistic joy from the intro onward ("Lay Of The Land"), metallic irritation in the vocal seasoned by the devilish counter-vocal of Gavin Friday, Irish founding member of the Virgin Prunes ("Copped It"), improv experiments that serve as a sonic backdrop to a phantasmagoric day teeming with indefinable beings ("Bug Day"), and a fake-melodic finale, whose subdued guitar, as if under narcosis, becomes functional to an entirely Disney-esque nightmare ("Disney's Dream Debased"), rendered evanescent by Smith's little backing choruses.

While the Eighties are split in two by the advance of an attitude that, starting from the Kraftwerk-derived synthesizer, sinks into the drift of an ever more glossy and self-referential pop, the Fall produce what critics call one of the best albums of the twenty years between 1985 and 2005: This Nation's Saving Grace. That Mark E. Smith was a character difficult to approach, with an edge that wasn't only physical, armed with a strange, rudimentary form of ethics based on absolute faithfulness to himself and his own inspiration, had been clear from the start, but ten years on, with a bit more of the spotlight and above all John Peel's blessing, could easily have produced strange forms of egotism too, as the stories of other glorious figures who ended up in the most mainstream pages and in the images of grotesque videos had shown.

Instead the miracle endures and the energy remains, as ever, unchanged. "Mansion", which opens the record, is just the curtain-raiser for a mood that's ever more irritated, yet self-aware, still able to bare its teeth at the system ("Bombast"), and even to indulge in vocal divertissements, aided by the tricks of multi-instrumentalist Simon Rogers, newly recruited through dancer Michael Clark ("What You Need"). They even manage to pass through wave sounds and turn them into an added value rather than a shabby gimmick aimed at attracting a cooler slice of audience than their usual shambolic followers ("LA"). But the real surprise of the record, and perhaps one of the most hallucinated and hallucinatory moments of the Fall's entire career, is the tribute to Japanese kraut musician Damo Suzuki, who for some years had already entered the legend of cosmic delirium through a primal yet, at the same time, postmodern physicality, striking in the live footage of Can; Smith holds nothing back, howling with wild pride his adoration for this Japanese primate, while Karl Burns's drums pound the air, wounding it to death and letting an invisible blood spurt out, infected with the all-too-real ghosts of some washed-out presenter on Top of the Pops ("I Am Damo Suzuki").

Rough Genius vs. Hedonism (1986-1989)

Setting aside their rough-edged appearance, which has always, in substance, been fed by erudite references and citations, the fruit of an imagination already dense with suggestion in its own right, Mark E. Smith decided, in 1986, to pay tribute to Vladimir Nabokov by naming the new album Bend Sinister, after one of his novels. Once again the magma that would roughly pour out of the new work risked being cooled by the absence of a stable drummer. But the situation is saved by the hiring of Simon Wolstencroft, who replaces the departed Paul Hanley, present on only two tracks of the record. "Dktr Faustus" drags along the long tail of a post-punk that, despite the rubbery hedonism gripping this new decade, remains, as genetic baggage, hard to kill off, as does the ironically cynical, hyped-up approach of "Mr Pharmacist", a cover of the American garage band The Other Half. A strange form of apocalyptic psychedelia wraps around the alt-rock of "U.S. 80's – 90's", swollen with bass and drums, while sweetened psycho-surf shakes up spirits in "Bournemouth Runner", with flare-ups of darker dark-punk in "Riddler", right up to the confusedly shifting closing track ("Auto-tech Pilot").

Two years later, again on Beggars Banquet, came The Frenz Experiment, which, buoyed by the tribute to the Kinks with the cover of "Victoria" and the recovery of an old Northern Soul track from 1965 reinterpreted in a voodoobilly key ("There's a Ghost in My House"), once again reinvigorates and energizes the sonic fabric compared to the slightly more minimal previous album. "Carry Bag Man" is just the start of a mood more agitated than ever, which develops in the accelerated dynamism of "Athlete Cured" and "Bremen Nacht Alternative", followed, before the end, by the rockabilly instrumental "Guest Informant Excerpt". Worth noting, on the CD version, a slightly more electrified version of "Hit The North Part 1".

The Eighties were drawing to a close, and, before the decade changed, out came I Am Kurious Oranj, the soundtrack to a contemporary dance piece by Michael Clark. Despite Smith's scruffiness, erudite citations return here too, with the album title partly borrowed from the late-Sixties films by Swedish director Vilgot Sjöman, "I Am Curious (Yellow)" and "I Am Curious (Blue)".

The heavy bass briefly ushers in a short bout of unease ("New Big Prinz"), before conjuring the spirit of William Blake in the sinister reworking of "Dog is Life/Jerusalem".

The last two years of the decade are marked by the release of a double compilation (Box One, in 1988, and Box Two, in 1989), and of a live album (Seminal Live, in 1989). Another important document, in the band's discontinuous history, is, in 1989, the special edition of an interview with Brix Smith, before her split from Mark and consequent departure from the Fall.

The Age of Confusion (1990-1999)

The event shuffles the deck once again in the wake of 1990, marking yet another lineup change. But while circumstances seem to presage a forced hand, a possible and decisive shift in sound, that same twist of fate brings with it an unexpected flip side: the return (at least temporary) of Martin Bramah on guitar, replacing the former Mrs. Smith.

The comeback of one of the band's founding members saves the day, and even amid the dawn of a new era marked by the slow fading of post-punk, Extricate - released in January 1990 on Phonogram and produced, among others, by Coldcut as well as Mark E. Smith himself - remains, by and large, pulsing and true to itself.

Preceded by the single "Telephone Thing", a kind of raw and insidious electronic hip-hop, Extricate manages to win over John Peel, who once again reaffirms his love for the band, struck above all by "Bill Is Dead" - originally a parody of the Smiths, with its curiously saccharine feel compared to the usual Smithsian bark, but which instead comes across as a small, admirable cameo, rudimentary in grace yet captivating, built on Craig Scanlon's melodious guitar. The album swings between the percussive alt-country of "Sing! Harpy", a steady-as-she-goes approach only slightly soured by a hard-rock streak in the guitars on "I'm Frank", a tribute to the beloved 60s garage sound of the Monks in a bleak, suffocating reworking of "I Hate You" that becomes "Black Monk Theme Part 1", the end-of-millennium beat of "Hilary" and "The Littlest Rebel", the restless, Hitchcockian blues of "Chicago, Now!", and finally the rockabilly closer "And Therein...", delighted by Bramah's little guitar lines.

Smith & Co.'s loquacious fertility is unstoppable, and the output continues with the 1991 release of Shift-Work, immediately preceded by a double compilation of A Sides and B Sides on Beggars Banquet. Shift-Work is a disorienting record, owing to its sheer variety. The analogue sound is neither a distant memory nor yet a settled reality in the band's new stylistic choices - a group which, while remaining true to a brilliant identity built on being cobbled-together and crooked, has no trouble embracing new technological gadgets, as shown by the carefree "So What About It?", the electro-romantic dance of "The Mixer", and the unlikely but hypnotic experiment of "Sinister Waltz".

Then it's back to the usual detonation with "White Lightening", tangential to the energy of the Jim Carroll Band, and "A Lot Of Wind", an apotheosis of amphetamine-fuelled speed. While Smith's voice seems to be experimenting with new tones over that strange blend of grey wave and burnt-out garage on "Book Of Lies", he even tries his hand at the jarring shape of a ballad on "Rose", the most serene and peaceable thing, closest to a whispered love song, that he has ever sung.

"Free Range" is the single that, in 1992, paves the way for Code:Selfish, a possible and likely follow-up to Shift-Work, but better attuned to the 90s mood thanks to the recruitment of an outstanding artist: Dave Bush on keyboards and electronic inserts. Although Bush is a devoted follower of the first wave of techno, the Fall remain, on the whole, true to form, keeping up their grudges and grumbling ("The Birmingham School Of Business School"), wearily dusting the air with a sonic fabric that in some ways recalls the golden age of Rem ("Time Enough At Last"), drawling tipsy end-of-millennium country ("Just Waiting"), and sadistically mocking the dramatic banality of certain social statuses ("Married, 2 Kids").

If it weren't for the electronically inlaid one-two punch of "So Called Dangerous" and "Crew Filth" (a pastiche built around a remix of "So What About It", the opening track of Shift-Work, plus an improvised, drunken a cappella), Bush's presence might go almost unnoticed. What stands out, shining with its own light, is "Gentlemen's Agreement", a moody, melancholy ballad whose shoegaze is only skilfully underscored at intervals by the tension of the snare drum.

1993. One more step. Not fake, but different. "Why Are People Grudgeful?", a ramshackle ska-reggae number that fuses Joe Gibbs' "People Grudgeful" and Lee "Scratch" Perry's "People Funny Boy" into a single body, is the single that brazenly announces the release, on Permanent, of The Infotainment Scan, an album many critics have called a genuine nod towards show business. But talk of ambitions to global stardom seems like a real paradox for an artist who, with total freedom and creativity, manages to poke fun even at the fashions of the day, mocking Britpop à la Suede on "Glam Racket", despite always having denied knowing anything about the glossy band. The cover-version game plays out instead on "Lost In Music", where, leggings and sequins set aside, all that's left of Sister Sledge is a fluorescent but highly acidic glow, barely sketched out by sparingly dosed synthesizers over Smith's trademark sulky, slurred vocals. And the game continues by trawling through the murky world of talent shows, with a cover of the little-known "I'm Going To Spain", a sordid little song originally performed in that setting by one Steve Bent.

The fascination with new strains of dance music finds fertile ground in the remix of "The League Of Bald-Headed Men", which becomes "League Moon Monkey Mix", a concentrate of techno/gabber, strictly for dancing in illicit venues.

But as if anticipating the inevitable criticism of an album made up almost half of covers, remixes and collages, Smith & Co. proudly flash their ID card with "Paranoia Man In Cheap Shit Room", which, right from the title, shows off all the cynicism that has always run through the band's veins, underscored by a nervous, angry electric guitar.

Amid the ongoing shuffling of personnel, 1994 brings a welcome lineup addition: Karl Burns, the drummer absent since 1985, leaves his mark on Middle Class Revolt. The album, whose full original title is "Middle Class Revolt A/K/A The Vapourisation Of Reality", unfolds in a loose, stretched-out way, at times pleasantly poppy (from "15 Ways" to the title track). But let's not kid ourselves into thinking Mark E. Smith has decided to clean up his act, because, as always, on every album, that unmistakable brand of genius and madness, irony and cynicism, cockiness and nerve is right there, and it claims the right to cover an alt-prog classic such as Henry Cow's "War", turning it from a pataphysical divertissement into an electrified, tribal frenzy. But the Fall can do other things too, building "Symbol Of Mordgan" around a football conversation Craig Scanlon had on the phone with John Peel during his Saturday afternoon show - all it takes is an old, distorted little guitar thrown in. As always, there's also room to get furious and dance like a maniac on "Hey! Student", to go bluesy on "Junk Man", a Groundhogs cover (the English blues band formed in the early Sixties), and to pay tribute once again to the sublime psych-garage of the Monks (as had already happened on Extricate), with a cover of "Shut Up".

While the band's fortunes hang in the balance of critics who don't always agree on the continuity of such a long-running project, the return of Brix Smith - Mark's ex-wife and a figure of fundamental importance in the difficult shift towards a more tempered form of post-punk back in the days of "Perverted By Language" - shapes the coordinates of Cerebral Caustic in 1995. The former couple officially present the album in an informal chat, describing its most notable features track by track, half-seriously and half in jest. Overall, the perception of the record isn't entirely negative, given the adrenaline rush of the intro ("The Joke"), followed by the two-voice divertissement of "Don't Call Me Darling", an odd little punk song of love and hate, before returning to Smith's cynically detached spoken delivery on "The Aphid". Quite peculiar, on the other hand, is "Bonkers In Phoenix", made up of two audio tracks weaving Brix's shrill, ecstatic singing together with a few of Mark's verses, in a sonic blend thick with electronic effects.

Mark, during these years, is rather restless, giving in to drink, and despite Brix's presence as a sort of guardian angel, his erratic behaviour affects the recording and promotional tour for The Light User Syndrome. The 1996 album is further enriched by Julia Nagle, a former collaborator of Martin Hannett, on keyboards and guitar. Craig Scanlon, a presence since Live At The Witch Trials, leaves the band, but reappears on "Stay Away (Ol' White Train)", a cover of Johnny Paycheck's song. The Light User Syndrome is confused, dark, and dense with ideas that don't always blend well together: from the frazzled opener "D.I.Y. Meat" to the videogame-like finale of "Secession Man", passing through the dark blues of "Hostile", which turns into a long industrial grind on "Interlude-Chinilism", swollen with Brix's vocal ups and downs, before reaching unprecedented heights with the funereal, compelling martial air of "The Ballard Of Joe Drummer" - an unusual, esoteric track in how it unfolds, its title carelessly printed on some copies as "The Ballad Of Joe Drummer", perhaps missing the more or less veiled nod to writer J. G. Ballard.

Before Levitate came out in 1997, a series of compilations and live albums hit the market, which might raise doubts about underlying fatigue, or suspicions of the band potentially coasting on past glories. But looking more closely at Smith's identity, one realises just how astonishing and overflowing a personality it actually is - complex and hyperactive, happily obsessive-compulsive in its output, the embodiment of that active nihilism which means salvation rather than a prior surrender of one's own will.

Levitate, which still features Julia Nagle, feels like one long experiment, suspended between a strange dialectic of jungle and post-punk ("Ten Houses Of Eve", "The Masquerade", "Jungle Rock"), Nuggets-style garage pushed so far as to cover innocent late-Fifties cartoon ditties ("Mummy" by Bob Mc Fadden&Dor, turned into "I'm A Mummy"), fast and disturbing sonic infernos ("Ol' Gang"), interludes of aching, Curtis-like beauty ("I Come And Stand At Your Door", inspired by a poem by Nazim Hikmet, of which "Jap Kid" is the instrumental version), and the usual chaos of a disreputable club ("Everybody But Myself").

The Marshall Suite, from 1999, was born out of one of the most troubled gestations in the Fall's prolific history, coming right after Mark's arrest during an American tour, caused by a spat with Julia Nagle, who nonetheless decided to keep her cool and stay in the band, trying to restore order and building a lineup from scratch. The result was a new drummer and two bassists, all recruited during the recording sessions, producing a thoroughly varied album, like a mad collage held together by Smith's barely veiled intention — read between the lines of an interview with The Wire — of making an autobiographical concept record.

The record sounds rough ("Touch Sensitive"), cheeky in its cover of Tommy Blake ("F -'Oldin' Money"), lingering in vintage rockabilly taste on "Bound", sullen in the shadow of "Inevitable", futuristic on "The Cryng Marshall" (a remix by producer Steve Hitchcock of a track Smith made with the Filthy Three), and loaded with dreamy keyboards on the evocative closer ("On My Own").

Indifferent to the Apocalypse (2000-2010)

Against every turn-of-the-millennium eschatology, by the start of 2000 the waters seem to have calmed, and the experiment of the new lineup put together by Julia Nagle carries on, opening up to new collaborations. Mark is still the same cynical Mancunian, despite his stint in an American jail, and he keeps having fun on The Unutterable, one of the few Fall albums with no covers at all. Hailed by some critics as a new "creative peak" for the band after years of obsessive deja vu, the album opens with "Cyber Insect", a lightning-fast electronic carousel softened by a cameo from Kazuko Hohki, the Anglo-Japanese artist and leader of Frank Chickens. The rhythm of "Sons Of Temperance" is schizophrenic instead, yet another declaration of scorn for every form of false moralism, paired with contempt for a certain kind of technological materialism, tossed off in the lines of "Dr. Buck's Letter", a shadowy homage to Charles Bukowski, and, at the same time, a dig at the lifestyle embodied by English DJ Pete Tong (who supposedly never leaves home without: sunglasses, CDs and cassettes, a palmtop, a mobile phone and a credit card). A take on drug abuse is voiced, in the form of a deranged spoken piece, on "Octo Realm-Ketamine Sun", while "Pumpkin Soup And Mashed Potatoes" celebrates Smith's favourite dish in delightful jazz form, and "Katerer" closes the whole thing off robotically.

Are You Are Missing Winner continues the path begun with The Unutterable, once again showing off a fascination with rockabilly and its offshoots, and a taste for covers, all under the patient aegis of the wisely hard-as-nails (almost as much as Mark) Julia Nagle.

The album, first released on CD in November 2001, pokes at Leadbelly's old-time blues, turning his "Bourgeois Blues" into a sinister slice of psychobilly ("Bourgeois Town"), rattles the psychedelic garage of "Gotta See Jane", a 1968 memorabilia piece credited to R. Dean Taylor, and stirs up sonic trouble on Iggy Pop's "Ibis – Afro Man". Among the originals, the standouts are surely the epic charge of "Crop Dust", the icy riddle of "The Acute", barely loosened by the crooked delirium of "Hollow Mind" (perhaps the track where the Fall sound most like themselves) and the hilarious rollercoaster ride of the closing "Reprise: Jane – Prof Mick – Ey Bastardo".

In the year separating Are You Are Missing Winner from The Real New Fall Lp (Formerly Country On The Click), the output of compilations, live albums and singles reached a peak never matched before. One might think this points to a sort of sabbatical year spent fine-tuning the past in order to diversify the present, so as to make the future more durable and appealing. In fact, The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country On The Click) carries a subtitle because its gestation is surely one of the most erratic in the band's history, due to an endless series of mixes that, after recording wrapped in 2003, only finished in the spring of the same year, when Smith, irritated by some remixes that had leaked online, decided to redo everything, meaning the album could only officially come out in October.

Compositionally speaking, you have to wait for the third track, "Theme From Sparta F.C.", to hear something truly inviting, where real Smith-ian blood starts flowing again. Not by chance, this track would go on to become the theme tune for some football broadcasts on which Smith himself worked as a football pundit. "Janet, Johnny And James" then earns a note of striking merit, a dusty alt-folk ballad unlike anything we'd heard before from this high-strung gentleman. And the fun continues with "Loop41`Houston", the album's only cover, a tribute to Lee Hazlewood, before switching gears back to a certain brand of new wave revised and corrected with some glittery electronic gadgetry on "Recovery Kit". The final fragment is the chilling tribal rock, à-la Savage Republic, of "Proteinprotection", just barely torn open by the choruses of its refrain.

Between The Real New Fall Lp (Formerly Country On The Click) and Fall Heads Roll, aside from the usual flood of singles, compilations and live albums, worth noting is the April 2005 release of a valuable boxset containing the Peel Sessions in full. The release took on extra weight because it was marked by a loss that unexpectedly struck the whole international music community: in October 2004, John Peel died, a figure of vital, historic importance to music culture over the previous forty years.

The relationship between the Fall and Peel was a peculiar one, to the point that the broadcaster said, paradoxically just a few months before his death, that one reason to put it off would be the release, a year later, of the new Fall record. And of that record, Peel only got to hear a few tracks, which closed out the Sessions, in August 2004.

Fall Heads Roll came out in October 2005, a few months after the Peel Sessions. The album is substantial and moody, suspended between playfulness, as in the surreal, ironic little march that opens it ("Ride Away"), a tough-as-nails spirit (barely softened by the choruses on "What About Us"), moments of apparent calm (in the disciplined "Midnight Aspen", diluted on the reprise), oblique tensions ("Blindness", "Trust In Me"), obsessive pounding ("Ya Winner"), and the sorrowful, mature ballads that the excitable Smith seems to have given in to in recent years ("Early Days Of Channel Fuehrer").

The two years that follow are packed with new compilations, live releases and even a brazen boxset (The Fall Boxset 1976-2007); Mark keeps alternating bursts of great enthusiasm with fits of rage that, in 2006, during the American tour, lead to Ben Pritchard, Spencer Birtwistle and Steve Trafford leaving the band. The deciding factor is once again a woman, Elena Poulou, Smith's third wife, who, together with her high-strung husband's controversial charisma, manages to piece the shattered core back together, bringing into the band Tim Presley and Rob Barbato of Darker My Love, Orpheo McCord of The Hill and Dave Spurr of Motherjohn. Presley, Barbato and McCord temporarily replace Ben Pritchard, Spencer Birtwistle and Steve Trafford, and the result is Reformation Post TLC. The album's spirit is all in the title, where, by "Post TLC", Smith would later clarify he meant the departed Pritchard, Birtwhistle and Trafford, branding them "Treacherous Lying Cunts".

The promotional push, helped along by the video for the devastating title track, is considerable. Mark dances with the rest of the band, yelling, gap-toothed and defiant, “Black River/ Fall Motel/ Cheese State/ TLC/Back ’81/ Repeat/ Underneath/ Black River/ Black River/ Fall Motel/ Cheese State/Reformation”, paying tribute to the Black River Falls Motel in Wisconsin that inspired the lyrics. Cut from the same cloth is the following "Fall Sound", a possible bone-crushing hit, along with "Systematic Abuse", an unmistakable, frenzied track of Smith-ian nihilism (“Systematic abuse/ It is the truth/ Systematic abuse/ It is the whole truth”). But, of course, the urge to wrong-foot the listener never lets up, and so here comes the easygoing alt-country of "White Line Fever", the unsettling little keyboard line and Poulou's haughty vocal on the electronic march of "The Wright Stuff", and the tribute to "Trout Mask Replica" on "Scenario".

A few months later, Mark indulges the whim of Mouse On Mars, joining forces with them as Von Sudenfed, an off-the-cuff tech-punk trio that produced "Tromatic Reflexxions", a startling and thoroughly enjoyable simmer of electro-scuzzy tension.

2008. More line-up changes, a young and attractive wife keeping the band's spirits up, a vital tension that seems unaffected by any of it, an unlikely side gig as a sports pundit for English TV, production by veteran Grant Showbiz (already behind the boards for The Smiths and Alternative TV, as well as on Dragnet, Grotesque, The Unutterable), and the sour minestrone of Imperial Wax Solvent, the 2008 album, is served.

The ode to the amusement park ("Alton Towers") and the furious middle age ("50 Year Old Man", and I like it), the fascination with the first synthetic robots à-la Kraftwerk ("Taurig") and the rechewed rewind of post-punk gone by ("Tommy Shooter"), the roguish nostalgia of Nuggets ("Is This New") and the rough cynicism ("Exploding Chimney") make up a sonic patchwork as varied as the most obvious case of multiple personality disorder, yet pulsing with primordial energy, endowed with the power of self-sustenance, against any possible injection of futuristic psychic viagra.

2010. The decade carrying the looming apocalypse doesn't scare Mark, who, having put out the usual compilations and live albums to feed the bulimic fans and fetishists, shows he still wants to stand tall on the scene, utterly indifferent, meanwhile, to any supposed crest of the wave. At 53, Mark manages to make a great rock'n'roll record while also souring the sophistications of other former child prodigies (as a special guest on the recent work by Damon Albarn's Gorillaz). And so it happens that Domino is pleased to present Your Future Our Clutter, the Fall's twenty-eighth studio album, described in the press notes as "most rampant, most forward moving, bone shaking best". The energy overflows right from the hyper-vitaminic intro ("O.F.Y.C. Showcase"), as well as in the brief lo-fi garage nod that opens "Bury Pts. 1+3". The drums pound ferociously through the gallop of "Cowboy George", delivered by Mark in the guise of a drunken bard, while "Hot Cake" slots straight into the next psychobilly Halloween playlist, alongside the slightly brighter cover of "Funnel Of Love", by the sublime Wanda Jackson.

And there's peace in the distorted ballad of the seemingly happy ending, interrupted by a sinister closing spoken part ("Weather Report 2").

From 2010 to today

In 2011 the band released the album Ersatz GB on Cherry Red.

Perhaps less striking than its immediate predecessor (but does anyone really care?), this record contains ten new monologues, in which the corrosive streak of one of the UK's most venomous (and clear-eyed) moralists lashes out freely at the symbols and rituals of a tragically irreversible cultural crumbling, aimed at a nation hated/loved with all the seething bile of his own guts.

The musical recipe doesn't change: clattering garage-psychobilly wreckage, deadly radiation of beefheartian blues dismantled and rebuilt through lopsided, feverish cut-ups, a speed-fuelled kraut spiral, absurdist situationism, rat poison. Smith bellows, graceless and hypnotic, like a bitter drunk watching the world while sinking among old tarts and video poker machines, and his targets range from Gossip Girl (on "Nat Will Not Return", spot on) to the hated Snow Patrol ("Mask Search").

On "Greenway" he even lifts the riff of a Greek metal band, Anorimori, and the result is both hilarious and brilliant, while "Happi Song" offers a very rare appearance by Smith's quite lovely wife, Eleni Poulou, herself Greek, also credited as a writer on what fans will remember as the Fall's peculiar take on the long-running twee-pop question.

In 2017 Mark E. Smith's creation returns with New Facts Emerge, the thirty-second album under the Fall name. A record that dusts off the band's most genuine punk impulses without giving in to a modernist rereading, especially on the short and emblematic "Victoria Train Station Massacre", before tossing a pebble into the future with the lengthy "Couple Vs Jobless Mid 30's'", which, despite veering into death-metal, keeps a lyrical gait closer to kraut and the bluesy outbursts of Captain Beefheart.

A few minor flaws here and there don't undermine the solid structure of the whole, also because the not-always-brilliant musical vein is matched by an expressive clarity that makes even those few minor episodes interesting and noteworthy, never lapsing into routine.

New Facts Emerge cements one of the band's longest-running line-ups (despite Elena Poulou's departure), and it's from this perfect chemistry that some of the most convincing performances emerge, such as the epic hardcore-punk of "Fol De Rol", the mocking, bittersweet ballad "Gibbus Gibson", the drunken rock'n'roll of "Groundsboy" and the dramatic spaghetti-western-style track "Nine Out Of Ten", which has the task of closing out, in style, yet another subversive act by the Fall.

The Fall's story, a spectacular whirlwind of line-up changes, dangerous mood swings, and hilarious cynicism, remains a cameo of absolute consistency to a raw energy, brilliant in its indiscipline and illuminating in its quest for a sound that never tastes like rechewed chewing gum.

Recommended discography

Some choices will mean leaving things out, others might surprise, and others still could spark outright uproar... but isn't that exactly what Mark E. Smith would expect?

Sticklers will be pleased to find the first two singles included (Bingo-Master's Break-Out!, It's The New Thing), before we go digging into the dustiest drawer of memory and grin diabolically in the face of Live at Witch Trials (1979). Speed, amphetamines, tension, messing about, provocation, altered states, tachycardia, all wrapped up in this strange post-punk laced with the most blasphemous garage rock, where grace counts for nothing and what matters is pounding away, laying claim, forcing even the most static of bodies to shake ("Rebelious Jukebox"), mocking dependence on the boss while treating the resulting depression with Valium ("Industrial Estate"), and riffing like a loose cannon on one's own nervous system, knowing exactly what the right medicine is ("Underground Medicine").

The same year sees the release of Dragnet, the record many critics consider the absolute peak of the entire Fall-ian discography, one that sets out the coordinates of a thoroughly personal sound in which the references are never clumsy tricks papering over a lack of real ideas, but, far more simply, tributes to fellow misfits, a way of saving oneself from an otherwise grey and miserable adolescence in Manchester. For Mark there's no dancehall that isn't swollen with raw rock'n'roll ("Psykick Dancehall"), no psych-blues that doesn't reckon with subversions à la Captain Beefheart ("A Figure Walks"), booze-soaked percussive chants ("Muzorewi's Daughter"), a cheeky alternation of gentle little guitars and tense proclamations ("Your Heart Out"), distortions drawn from urban tribalism, a not-too-distant cousin of certain no wave ("Spectre vs Reactor").

Dropped by Rough Trade in 1980, and produced, among others, by Mayo Thompson of Red Krayola, Grotesque is the long tail of Dragnet, less acidic, more playful, and closer to the genuine spirit of the English working class, still happily stirred up by Smith's lyrics, which, in this sort of concept album, bring together private vices and public virtues with an aplomb perched atop a string of glaring social contradictions. "Pay Your Rates" is the frantic dance of the worker crushed by his own tertiary needs, while the sound driving "C'n'C-S Mithering" is essential in its percussive obsessiveness. Country is no mere affectation here, as proven by its most adrenaline-fuelled version in "The Container Drivers", and the taste for grumbling introduces the long closing track ("The N.W.R.A."), laid over a drum part that, a quarter of the way in, resolves its antagonism with the bass - initially isolated - into a striking call and response.

After an initial spell with Rough Trade, 1982 brings Hex Enduction Hour, released on the smaller Kamera label, an album that shows the first signs of a more deeply felt awareness of the band's own potential. In other words, Mark and co. begin to realise they could push beyond Europe's borders. The record's framework lets in a few more markedly pop glimmers ("The Classical"), without, however, emptying out the raw identity of the Fall sound, emphasised by the masterful use of double drums ("And This Day"). The anti-clerical streak is one of Mark's fixations, which he builds into the macabre, blues-tinged caricature of "Hip Priest". But society isn't afflicted only by the disease of a petty, fake Christianity - respectability also harbours abuses of power pushed as far as paedophilia, whose disturbing panting completes the surreal yet all-too-real picture of "Who Makes the Nazis?". Absolutely not to be missed is the surprising, gripping psych-folk epic "Iceland".

Talking about Perverted by Language, released once again on Rough Trade (despite the contract with the label having already ended), means first of all unearthing one of the strangest songs ever to spring from Mark Smith's unfathomable mind, an experiment in which the stage is left almost entirely to the awkward, alienating vocals of his wife Brix Smith, resulting in a melancholy, proto-shoegaze delirium ("Hotel Bloedel"). Elsewhere, the attempt to produce chaos survives, even within the frame of something resembling a melody ("Garden"). There's no rush here - it's better to destabilise with a certain focus, setting aside, at least for the length of an album, the speed factor ("Smile"), playing the card of a post-punk unlike anyone else's ("I Feel Voxish"), or slowed-down psychobilly in the closing track ("Hexen Definitive/Strife Knot").

In 1985, the Fall land another major hit with This Nation's Saving Grace. Gone is the double drum kit, replaced by their most boiling inspiration yet, giving rise to a genuine masterpiece that, starting out as a tribute to one of krautrock's key figures, Mr. Damo Suzuki, turns into a track with a rock-solid identity all its own within the genre. "I Am Damo Suzuki" is neural tribalism, a straight line accelerating, a journey through a suggestible, altered psyche, and it has no trouble at all placing itself among the top ten best songs the Fall ever wrote and performed. But that's not all, as there's also room for the beat divertissement of "Barmy" and the Kinks-style attack of "Gut Of Quantifier", along with the lo-fi country rock of "Spoilt Victorian Child" and the return to post-punk of "L.A.". On the 1990 reissue, standouts include the vintage bebop of "Rollin' Dany", already covered by Gene Vincent back in 1957, and the shake of "Couldn't Get Ahead", with Brix's gloriously ungainly vocals.

The Light User Syndrome is the two-faced product of a crisis that had dragged on for more than ten years, between various abuses and the cat-and-mouse games between Brix and Mark, finally at peace. It's 1996, and if Mark had messed about a little less, the record would have held together more cohesively. But we love the Fall precisely for the chaos their delirious art springs from - Mark fascinates us because, over the course of an hour, he's capable of giving you both a hug and a punch in the face, so we take this stuff as a whole, warts and all. The explosive opener ("D.I.Y. Meat") already earns our forgiveness for everything, before we go on to appreciate the experimentation of "Interlude/Chilinism", which pairs a sulphurous intro, barely softened by Julia Nagle's little keyboard, with a new, murky slice of krauterie. That Mark might be bipolar is hardly just an impression, listening to the inspired martial stomp of the ambiguous "The Ballard Of J. Drummer", sitting close to its antithetical closer "Secession Man", a fizzy little pop number that gets your limbs moving without a care.

A year on from The Light User Syndrome, Mark is still inspired, and shows no sign of letting up. On Levitate, from 1997, the shape of the Fall's near-future style begins to take form: a mature post-punk, grown with absolute dignity and an ability to open up to synthetic sounds without its own identity suffering for it, in a nimble, ironic dialectic that would still yield a few more pugnacious thrills. "Masquerade" is the ideal song for weaving through rush-hour traffic, indifferent to the astonishment around you, while "I'm A Mummy" is the toy-box cover with which to stun the guests at a radical-chic, garage-flavoured party. The real surprise is undoubtedly "I Come And Stand At Your Door", written by Julia Nagle and inspired by a poem by Nazim Hikmet: listening to this ballad, one starts to think that Mark isn't only that master of cynicism and such radical disenchantment and misanthropy, but also, when the occasion calls for it, a man capable of real pathos, which here emerges without the slightest trace of embarrassment.

The Real New Fall Lp Formerly 'Country On The Click' came out in 2003, after various dramas linked to it leaking online ahead of schedule, with Mark's resulting fury so great that, on the promo copies of the final edition, he doesn't hesitate to issue blunt threats to anyone who tries it again. The album is tense, as on "Theme From Sparta F.C.", which would go on to become the theme tune for several sports programmes that Mark, by now, is practically part of as an improbable football pundit. On "Janet, Johnny + James", the folk experiment pays off, producing a ballad that's just slightly faster than usual, on which Mark, rarely for him, drops his voice for a moment. The backing vocals of Elena Poulou - the new keyboardist and Mark's new wife (!) - appear on several tracks on the album, lending a touch of softness to the steel-plated framework of "Proteinprotection", with its powerhouse rhythm section.

The not-just-marital partnership with Poulou seems to be doing Mark's spirits good, and four years after the decade's first great record, he returns with Reformation Post TLC. The line-up reshuffled yet again, a new label, and no shortage of provocations, starting with the intro "Over! Over!", which opens with a grim, sinister laugh from Mark, ready to dole out sticks of dynamite, with the vigorously post-punk title track poisoning the air all around it.

Poulou isn't just a "hot piece", but a musician of real substance, jittery on keyboards and effortlessly assured as a vocalist, as heard on "The Wright Stuff", written entirely for her. "White Line Fever", the Merle Haggard alt-country classic, gets the full choral treatment, another entry in the band's long tradition of covers. If "Scenario" is a tribute to "Trout Mask Replica", "Insult Song" is a further declaration of fascination with Captain Beefheart himself, forever the master of Dadaist cynicism.

Mark E. Smith died on 24 January 2018, at his home. He was 60 years old. A sudden death, announced by his manager Pam Van-Damned. In 2017, Smith had been forced to cancel a number of shows due to "bizarre and rare medical complications".

30 May 1978. Radio One, BBC. John Peel isn't an easy man to impress, and Mark E. Smith, barely into his twenties, oozes insolent cheek. There's nothing concrete to show for it yet, bar a handful of live shows and two singles ("Bingo-Master's Break-Out!", "It's the New Thing"), but the lads deserve their shot. Edgy, intolerant of the creeping synthetic poseurs, educated proles pulsing with late-adolescent fervour for Sixties garage, Captain Beefheart, the Velvet Underground and Can, they're in the studio and they want to play.

So begins a relationship of mutual, gleeful trust that would last almost thirty years, right up until Peel's sudden death in October 2004, barely two months after the band's final session with him, recorded that same August.

Seven hours and 5 minutes of music, spread across 97 tracks over 24 radio sessions, bearing witness to a cult of genuine devotion to the brilliant intemperance of Mark E. Smith, all packed into the 6-CD boxset released by Castle Music in 2005, almost as an official tribute of esteem to the late mentor.

The first CD, which spans the band's output from the single "Bingo-Master's Break-Out!" to the album Hex Enduction Hour, with a few rarities thrown in, is steeped in the enthusiasm and energy of a beginning bubbling like a young volcano, waiting to erupt (from a slightly sped-up yet crystalline "Industrial Estate" to the slap-in-the-face irony of "Hip Priest").

On the second CD, the story continues with Hex Enduction Hour, from which a more tribal, stark and shadowy version of "Who Makes the Nazis?" is dredged up, and closes with "C.R.E.E.P.", a 1984 single, in a more video-game-like version.

The third installment runs from This Nation's Saving Grace to The Frenz Experiment, passing through the carefree metamorphosis of "Dktr Faustus" into "Faust Banana" and the roughness of "Athlete Cured".

In box number 4, which runs from I'm A Curious Oranj to Code Selfish, the spotlight belongs entirely to "A Lot Of Wind", an overflowing slice of country-punk for a hyperactive humanity.

In the fifth act (the most generous, with a full twenty tracks, running from The Infotainment Scan all the way to The Light User Sindrome), not to be missed is the post-garage divertissement of the Sonics cover "Strychnine", alongside a less effects-laden and more lighthearted version of "Interlude/Chinilist".

Finally, on the CD that closes the box, gathering the output spanning from Levitate to Fall Heads Roll (which would come out after Peel's death, in 2005), "Masquerade" is revisited in a slightly more baroque version, "Theme From Sparta F.C." gives way to lo-fi, and "Blindness" to distortion.

A boxset to own, no ifs, ands or buts.

Rebellious Jukebox

Building the Fall jukebox has nothing to do with drawing up a compilation (15 songs wouldn't be enough), nor is it a random selection. It's a game played backwards through the memory of a sprawling discography, following the moody, subversive, disorienting genius of Mark E. Smith.

Bingo-Master's Break-Out! (7", Step-Forward, 1978)

We like it because it's the end of 1977, Mark is twenty years old, the conventions of post-punk are starting to be neatly arranged into a grid that will eventually become stifling, and he couldn't care less, scrambling everything and pouring in all of his active nihilism.

Rebellious Jukebox (Live At The Witch Trias, Step-Forward, 1979)

Not an obvious choice, because here the Fall make our synapses jump. Standing still is an injustice to yourself before it's one to the music, and trying to shake the refrain lodged in your head is an act of barbarism.

Underground Medicine (Live At The Witch Trials, Step-Forward, 1979)

Just over two minutes of stark, frenzied rock'n'roll where everything slots together perfectly and the snare drum diligently follows Mark's orders, completely wound up.

A Figure Walks (Dragnet, Step-Forward, 1979)

Hallucinated and hallucinatory dock-blues, as sinister as the title suggests, with Mark warbling raggedly in the manner of Captain Beefheart.

Muzorewi's Daughter (Dragnet, Step-Forward, 1979)

Slightly more dissonant than the previous one, it's black-and-white psychobilly that builds to a climax of autistic obsession.

Fiery Jack (7", Fiery Jack, Step-Forward, 1980)

A hilarious single, a breakneck rockabilly carousel, the definitive springboard towards signing with a Rough Trade in a state of grace.

City Hobgoblins (7", How I Wrote 'Elastic Man', Rough Trade, 1980)

Side B of the 7" produced by Rough Trade, with Mayo Thompson behind the desk. Sixties garage rock is picked up, dusted off and given a little electroshock treatment.

Totally Wired (7", Totally Wired, Rough Trade, 1980)

And this time it's the Side A that sets things alight. A manifesto of personal neurosis, which Mark sings with carefree pride, unleashing a sound, robust post-punk largely untouched by the fashions of the moment.

The Classical (Hex Enduction Hour, Kamera, 1982)

Whatever the intention, self-reference is hardly Mark's prerogative - on the contrary, he has every interest in slapping his modus cogitandi right in the audience's face, here more compelling than ever within its alt-pop framework.

I Am Damo Suzuki (This Nation’s Saving Grace, Beggars Banquet, 1985)

We said it before: we're close to perfection. "I Am Damo Suzuki" sees Mark shed the guise of mocking, cynical post-punker to slip into the role of wild krauter, paying tribute to the memorable Can frontman. The transfiguration comes off brilliantly, and the track grabs us by the throat, forcing us to listen to it at least three times in a row, because once is never enough.

Hey! Luciani (7", Beggars Banquet, 1986)

Mark had evidently been struck by the strange case of Pope John Paul I (Pope Luciani), the "33-Day Pope", who died under murky circumstances roughly a month after his election to the papal throne. The song format is remarkably tactful, and serves a handful of observations on the case, delivered with sharpness and disenchantment.

Hit The North (7″, Hit the North, Beggars Banquet, 1987)

A classic Fall pub anthem. Choral, rousing, at times carefree. The chorus's exhortation "Hit The North!" is unbeatable - the kind of line to be bellowed at the top of your lungs at a boozy house party.

A Lot Of Wind (Shift-Work, Cog Sinister/Fontana, 1991)

The Cavalleria Rusticana of punk'n'roll, with the band possessed as they hadn't been in ages. A single, morbid delirium that saves an entire album otherwise destined to languish at the back of memory.

The Ballard Of J. Drummer (The Light User Syndrome, Jet, 1996)

Ballardian desolation right from the title. Martial intensity to the nth degree, inspired spoken-word, a whiff of new krautery. Continuing the game of literary references, a crepuscular "journey to the end of the night".

Reformation! (Reformation Post TLC, Slogan/ Sanctuary, 2007)

Nothing could be truer to itself, even across three decades thick with mutations and personal disasters. Mean, spiteful, furious, more apocalyptic than ever, younger than the young musicians making up his new line-up, confident and proud of his own cockiness, Mark is magnificent, in his new, crooked Renaissance.

(in collaboration with Mucchio Extra, whom we thank)

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