In the early 90s, The Fall hit upon a relatively commercial sound on albums like ‘Extricate’ and ‘The Infotainment Scan’, but as the decade wore on, they found themselves somewhat floundering. Unable to capture a distinctive sound, at least beyond Mark E. Smith’s trademark drawl, their albums became a little hit and miss. 1995’s ‘Cerebral Caustic’ traded in their sharper edged approach for something far more lo-fi; the swiftly delivered ‘Light User Syndrome’ sounded like Fall-by-numbers (although they were great on that tour), and 1997’s ‘Levitate’ abandoned most of the band’s post punk and garage tendencies for extra synths and a barrage of dance rhythms, creating the ultimate opinion-divider. The best bits of 1999’s ‘The Marshall Suite’ reminded everyone that the band were still capable of delivering a few bangers (‘Touch Sensitive’ would go on to become one of The Fall’s most enduring tracks), but by the turn of the millennium, it began to seem like The Fall mightn’t deliver a “classic” album ever again.
Although it’s more scattershot than, say, the likes of ‘Middle Class Revolt’ (1994) and ‘The Light User Syndrome’ (1996), a case could be made for 2000’s ‘The Unutterable’ being one of The Fall’s more “interesting” records, in that it plays like a massive grab bag of most of the band’s musical excursions and experiments over the previous decade. It certainly isn’t their most immediate and utterly runs out of steam three quarters of the way through, but for the bigger fan, it’s definitely an album that’s worth investigating.
‘Cyber Insekt’ – soon to become a live staple for the ‘Unutterable’ live shows – opens the record in typically obtuse fashion when a drum shuffle that sounds like something lifted straight from ‘Ballroom Blitz’ is overlaid by atonal synth lines and a dual vocal where MES drawls almost incoherently, and guesting musician Kazuko Hohki (of Frank Chickens) barks the title incessantly. It’s more about rhythm than melody, but the busy approach of the track soon becomes infectious. The noisier ‘Two Librans’ – a number absolutely loaded with Adam Helal’s fuzzy, distorted bass grooves, and with post-punk guitar lines – sounds far more like a “typical” Fall piece, but the weight of the guitar riff ensures it sounds more contemporary than anything vaguely similar from the band’s 80s archive. The music is great, but the track is ultimately becomes a Fall “classic” due
to Smith’s input and, here, he spends the better part of four minutes delivering weird non-sequitors involving a (mispronounced) Oprah Winfrey studying bees, to Tolstoy, and European opinions on wastage.
The arrival of ‘W B’ finally brings a few of Smith’s beloved rockabilly guitar tones on a mid tempo piece, where 90s synths colour a melody that could’ve been culled from decades’ past. There’s nothing particularly striking about this track, even by Fall standards, but the way Smith stretches his vocal across a solid melody definitely makes everything sound a little quirkier than it would’ve sounded in the hands of any other indie/post punk band at the turn of the millennium. It’s a little too repetitive, unlikely to be anyone’s cast iron favourite, but it manages to cement any early feelings that ‘The Unutterable’ is a pleasingly varied, if somewhat unsettled disc.
The brilliantly punky ‘Sons of Temperance’ allows guitarist Neville Wilding to cut loose and for MES to indulge in a rather simplistic shouty hook – not entirely typical for the time. However, just in case anything is in danger of becoming too predictable, the middle of the track veers into a landscape of weird synth-led psychedelia, adding a different feel to an already varied album, before the rhythmic ‘Dr. Bucks Letter’ splices drumming akin to ‘Burundi Blue’ to darker, Krautrock inspired synth lines. It doesn’t resemble anything else from ‘The Unutterable’ – or possibly much else from previous Fall tomes – but a sneering MES makes everything sound immediately recognisable. Rambling about anger management issues, radio-based distractions, and issues with his own personal assistant’s computer-based filing systems, the sprawling narrative likely doesn’t make complete sense to anyone but himself, but it helps to create something great.
From there, things remain truly eclectic with ‘Hot Runes’ hammering out something that comes much closer to traditional rockabilly fare, and a spirited synth oriented ‘Way Round’ sounding like a throwback to 1990’s genuinely brilliant ‘Extricate’. Then, there’s the initially weird ‘Octo Realm/Ketamin Sun’ which splices something vaguely industrial sounding to a cassette recording that barely sounds audible in a callback to Mark E. Smith’s 1998 audio verite release ‘The Post Nearly Man’, before settling into a mid tempo, semi heavy riff that sounds like Pixies working a moody post punk banger. The relatively simple approach to the guitar riff gives a great insight as to why this would find a regular place in future live sets – at least for a time – but measured against the bulk of ‘The Unutterable’s experiments, it’s not always that interesting.
The second half of the record kicks off with ‘Serum’ – a track that melds the dirty rhythms of ‘Dr. Buck’s Letter’ to semi-industrial grooves, occasionally sounding like a ‘Levitate’ cast-off, before a startlingly short title track shares more weird audio verite from Smith, grumbling and slurring against a rhythm that sounds like someone sawing wood. At the point where the album feels like it surely couldn’t throw another curveball, piano melodies and finger clicks lead the charge for ‘Pumpkin Soup & Mashed Potatoes’, a piece of deliberate shlock that brings 1930’s jazz to an audience of unsuspecting post punk devotees. It plays like a genuine novelty – something rarely associated with The Fall – and beyond the initial surprise, becomes a potential “skipper”. It isn’t terrible, but certainly smacks of “b-side material” used to flesh out something in the CD era. The punky ‘Hands Up Billy’ sets everything back on track musically, but could actually be any number of post punk bands due to a lack of MES vocal.
‘…Billy’ isn’t a classic, but the performance has a great drive, and provides a vital role in giving everything a genuine jolt before ‘Midwatch 1953’ drops everything back into a landscape of wantonly weird, signifying the beginning of this album’s descent into what feels like experimental filler. Across a laboured – and frankly audience-testing – five minutes, Julia Nagle drops various keyboard bleeps against a rattling drum part whilst Smith mumbles as if even he knows the band might be taking the piss. Beyond his repetition of “midwatch, midwatch” very little else is actually audible. After about a minute and a half, you’ll probably find yourself wondering how this made the cut. The same goes for ‘Deviate’, a selection of noisy synth sounds that play like Jean Michel Jarre experimenting with something ugly against a multi-tracked MES bellowing various unconnected statements.
Rounding out the material with ‘Das Katerer’, ‘The Unutterable’ bows out with a number that pulls as much influence from Utah Saints as it does post punk. Nagle leads the charge with a riff that sounds like a dirty variant of something Euro inspired and MES – often one to disarm his adoring audience – attacks a lyric about food delivery and offering chicken and chips on the bone-ah. There’s every chance that it might not be about catering at all…but there’s definitely a feeling that Mark is in somewhat of an odd mood. It’s certainly not where anyone expected this album to end almost an hour earlier.
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Taken on its own merits, ‘The Unutterable’ is a record that’s initially very strong and often surprising, even if it isn’t The Fall’s most accessible. The multi disc reissue that’s been compiled as the eleventh deluxe release in Cherry Red Records’ ‘Fall Sound Archive’ series, however, comes up a little short when it comes to those essential bonus materials. There’s no Peel Session – it’s a rare occurrence when MES and his cohorts fail to promote their upcoming product with their biggest champion – and there’s absolutely no unreleased material to be found lurking within the four CD package. The main album itself remains a fascinating listen, but in terms of more interesting extras, the pickings are somewhat slimmer than usual. Mirroring the earlier 2CD reissue, the second disc presents the ‘Testa Rossa Monitor Mixes’, rough early versions of many of the album tracks which occasionally sound like they’re being eavesdropped upon from an adjacent room, which are only of great interest if you’re a massive fan. However, offering something unique, the selection offers a couple of unused instrumental jams. ‘Instrum One’ is a wilfully crashy garage rocker, all power chords at the outset, before dropping into a drum-led passage where the thin sound guitar appears to echo the sounds of early Wire. ‘Instrum Two’ is more drum focused, hitting the listener with huge 70s beats, before exploding into a world of garage rock that sounds like a forerunner to The Hives augmented with simplistic, somewhat ugly keys. In many ways, these tracks play like a dry run for the much more ragged ‘Are You Are Missing Winner’, which would be released the following year.
For those Fall obsessives who couldn’t afford the strictly limited and rather expensive Cog Sinister ‘Set of Ten’ box set releases, discs three and four in this box will certainly offer some consolation, but even then, neither show is in anything like perfect quality.
The first set – recorded in 2001 at Welsh venue TJ’s – is reasonably clear compared to many Fall bootlegs doing the rounds, but the drum sound definitely gives away its unofficial source. The snare drums are especially loud throughout, and have a tendency to drown out the finer details in MES’s performance, while a very natural sounding bass is also high in the mix. Throughout ‘The Temperance’, it’s pretty much the “Rhythm Section and Mark Show-ah”, since the guitars are inaudible. This doesn’t stop the performance having a lot of spirit, and the same applies to a spiky ‘Two Librans’ where an occasional abrasive noise comes from the guitar, but in the main, the listener is confronted by loud drums and a relentless bass throb. It’s rough, but has plenty of energy – and certainly sounds like it would have been a thrill for anyone present. Judging by the crowd noise drifting between the announcements, The Fall played to about twenty people that night…
Hammering through ‘Touch Sensitive’ – at this point, the closest The Fall come to wheeling out a “crowd pleaser” – the band’s rough edges are evident, but not as much as they are during a painfully slow ‘Antidotes’, which fills five minutes with a heavy drum beat and and a grinding guitar. It could be argued that at least now the guitar is present, but the performance is fairly dreary all told, and really derails the momentum that the opening numbers have built up. It’s likely MES would have been thrilled by this, since he never gave his audience an easy ride. Thankfully, the old school rock ‘n’ roll punch of the ever reliable ‘F-oldin’ Money’ gives the set a genuine kick up the arse, and although this is all buzzing bass noise and drawled vocals – making it sound like an industrial remix, of sorts – the dodgy audio provides a really different take on an old favourite, before a similarly punchy ‘Way Round’ shows off this week’s Fall in great shape with synth noises piercing the wall of sound, and with the repetitive groove working a great rhythm section very effectively. Mark still gets drowned out by his own band on occasion, but perhaps more than anything else during this gig, this gives the feeling of actually being in the venue.
With so many great numbers at their disposal, a decision to wheel out the still brand new ‘Devolute’ is utterly misjudged. Especially so, considering MES decides on this night not to stick to the script and replaces his expected spoken word with an almost indecipherable ramble, which appears to be about Scotland and Grolsch, but an outing for ‘I Am Damo Suzuki’ definitely makes up for this set’s more uneven aspects, with a world of barked lyrics and howling guitar sounds bringing a genuine fury to something that would’ve been familiar to most. With a relatively tight ‘Mr. Pharmacist’ also giving the nod to a Fall of the past, and an early outing for the soon to be released ‘Ibis-Afro Man’ showing off MES’s desire to always propel forward (as well as being one of the occasions where the full band can be heard!) this eventually becomes a live set that the bigger fan should find pleasure in, despite any audio issues.
The second live set – captured at The Liquid Rooms in Edinburgh, 2001 – doesn’t sound much better. It could be argued that it’s warmer, but everything sounds distant. Despite this, the set list is good, with a rough but early take on ‘Jim’s The Fall’ and the brand spanking ‘Kick The Can’ making The Fall sound like the world’s noisiest indie band, and the newer songs here really give a sense of a newly energised line-up. The always brilliant ‘F-oldin’ Money’ is bass drenched and heavy, but clearly well received by someone very near the show’s taper; ‘I Am Damo Suzuki’ sounds a bit threatening with MES growling against a piercing guitar line, and an unexpected ‘And Therein’ sounds pleasingly raw, and its relatively tuneless repetition is seemingly loved by a crowd that, at times, are far more enthused than their Welsh counterparts.
Despite only being six months on from the gig at TJ’s, it’s amazing how much the set has been shaken up. ‘Antidotes’, ‘The Temporance’ and (thankfully) ‘Devolute’ have been dropped; in their place comes the semi punk ‘The Joke’ with a world of whirring guitar sounds and barking vocals capturing some sharp as hell post punk, a very dark ‘Crop Dust’ showing off some brilliantly muscular bass work while Mark sneers relentlessly, and a fantastic ‘Bourgois Town’ where Mark intercuts his lyrical bite with noises that make him sound like a whirring machine. Even taking the audio quality out of the equasion, this is so much more exciting than the TJ’s gig.
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Granted, there have been more essential Fall reissues in the past (the ‘1982’ set and the 6CD ‘Infotainment Scan’ are especially lovely), but you don’t own ‘The Unutterable’ on any hard copy formats, this will still be a solid collection filler. For those who already own the 2CD edition, it’s purely down to the individual as to whether a couple of extra Cog Sinister live shows – just two of about three hundred or so, it seems – might be enough of a sweetener… Still, if you’re familiar with Cherry Red’s Fall reissues, you can expect to find this put together with the same amount of love, and regardless of any missed opportunities, it’s still great to have one of the band’s “lesser” albums celebrated.
Buy the CD box set here.
August/October 2025