The Fall

The Fall
Imperial Wax Solvent
(Castle)

Another year, another Fall album. A good rule of thumb for Fall releases is they get better over time, but a year after Reformation Post TLC, that album seems one of their least inspired and most forced. Blame it on the pick-up band Mark E. Smith recruited at the next-to-last minute, Smith’s bad mood or indifference at the time, but following two of his best releases in years — The Real New Fall LP and Fall Heads Roll — most of the album was actually lacking in the TLC that makes successful Fall albums such a treat. 

Fortunately, Imperial Wax Solvent eschews the lengthy studio jams, improvs and “experiments” that bogged down TLC. Most of the songs hover around the three-minute mark, the notable exception being the sublime “50 Year Old Man.” The 11-minute groove  is interrupted by a banjo tune four minutes in, with an instrumental breakdown that sounds like a teenage Can jamming in a garage before it exits on a spot-on mid-’80s Fall repetitive groove. “I’m a 50 year old man, and I like it / I’m a 50 year old man what’re you gonna do about it,” Smith drawls, sounding as if he’s halfway through a bottle of whiskey. It’s the kind of track you’re surprised and delighted to find he can still muster.

If that high note appears early in the album at track three, the remaining nine songs are well worth sticking around for. Keyboardist Elena Poulou, the current Mrs. Mark E. Smith, sings the bouncy new wave number “I’ve Benn Duped,” and the obligatory cover is the Groundhogs’ “Strange Town,” which as usual the band refashions in their own image. Only Poulou and bassist Dave Spurr remain from last season’s incarnation of the Fall, with Pete Greenway on guitar and Keiron Melling on drums for now.

What makes one version of late-period Fall better than another? Hard to say, but whoever comes closest to the classic Hanley/Scanlon/Wolstencroft era from the early ’80s to mid ’90s seems to have the best luck, and the Wax band does a good job of it. Smith would scoff at that notion, of course, but as much as he would like to believe otherwise, at this point the legacy of the Fall belongs as much to its musicians and fans as it does to him.