The Fall Album: "Fall Heads Roll" Release Date: Oct 4, 2005 Label: Sanctuary Rock-Rev Value: [7.5/10] Genre: Rock Styles: Post-Punk, College Rock, Indie Rock, Punk, British Punk, Alternative Pop/ Rock Buy It

Tracklist:

1 Ride Away (5:01)
2 Pacifying Joint (3:46)
3 What About Us? (5:51)
4 Midnight Aspen (3:13)
5 Assume (4:07)
6 Midnight Aspen Reprise (1:53)
7 Blindness (7:24)
8 I Can Hear the Grass Grow (2:50)
9 Bo Demmick (4:15)
10 Youwanner (5:02)
11 Clasp Hands (2:45)
12 Early Days of Channel Führer (3:48)
13 Breaking the Rules (2:26)
14 Trust in Me (3:34)

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review by:Allmusic
reviewer: Heather Phares
Allmusic Album Value: (4.5/5)

Having exorcised enough bile for two bands on their rickety release Interim, the Fall loosen up their attitude, tighten up their delivery, and squeeze out a rocking album that relies heavily on its highlights. Fortunately, there's plenty, most hitting with the thwack of the "Sparta FC" single or the Light User Syndrome album. "Pacifying Joint" is a punchy exercise in hooks and sheen, "What About Us" is snide Mancabilly of the highest order, and "Blindness" hypnotizes and chugs its way into the Top 25 original Fall tracks ever. Flashiest of the lot has to be a soaring cover of the Move's hippy anthem "I Can Hear the Grass Grow," a raucous singalong adaptation that brings sweet reminders of the group's take on the Kinks' "Victoria." Bringing up the second line are the usual brainy meanders like "Bo Demmick" and "Youwanner," plus the hip-shaking rave-up "Clasp Hands." Less ambitious songs and quirky numbers like the country-bumpkin reggae "Ride Away" and the lazy, acoustic "Early Days of Channel Führer" round out the album well, but some B-side-worthy leftovers tacked onto the end keep this from being Dragnet -- or Country on the Click, for that matter. Instead of just stealing the riff, "Breaking the Rules" would do better if it actually turned into "Walk Like a Man" and the Mark E. Smith-less "Trust in Me" is a fair Placebo-meets-Comsat Angels track that's horribly out of place here. Vocalist/Fall czar Smith is writing and singing with plenty of purpose up to this point, and if you hack off the misguided finish, Fall Heads Roll proves they can still live up to their legend.

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review by:Pitchfork
reviewer:Joe Tangari, October 10, 2005
Album Value: (7.8/10)

For a band with such a devoted cult following, the Fall are rarely covered by other groups. It's hardly surprising, of course, given the group's general disdain for standard song structures and Mark E. Smith's general-uh disdain-uh for everything, including conventional singing. For the same reasons, it's always jarring to hear the Fall doing someone else's song. When I first heard their version of the Kinks' "Victoria", I could scarcely believe it was real, and I still don't like it. Perhaps I'm too attached to the stunning original to bother with the exponentially higher level of sarcasm Smith brings to the table.

I'm not quite as attached to the Move's "I Can Hear the Grass Grow", but it's among my favorite nuggets from the UK's late-60s psychedelic explosion, a brilliantly arranged song that married trippy lyrics and harmonies to a brawling mod rave-up. Smith and his latest lineup naturally strip away all of those elements when they tackle the song in the middle of Fall Heads Roll, their 80th or 90th album. By the time they're done with it, the poor song is lying in a little broken heap, laid out by Smith's singing-not-singing and the band's frantic evisceration of the original's complex, multi-part arrangement. It's not an improvement, but it's different, and the Fall have undeniably made it their own.

I don't know if Smith intends sarcasm on "I Can Hear the Grass Grow", but it's hard not to hear it. The guy fairly drips with it-- it's like an appendage of his body at this point, and it gets him plenty of sneering mileage on Fall Heads Roll, a grab-bag of a Fall album with brilliant highs and scattered lows. In other words, it's exactly what Fall followers are hoping for, and it continues the band's recent run of strong work, even reviving a few promising songs from the dead zone of last year's unforgivably sloppy Interim compilation. "Blindness", for example, comes back in its third incarnation. With each subsequent revision, the song has grown longer and nastier, and here, the incessant bass crunch and hovering guitar parts drip with fury. (...)

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review by:Playlouder
reviewer: Luke Turner, 29 sept. 2005
Album Value: [4/5]

The Fall's version of The Move's 'I Can Hear The Grass Grow' is an apt midpoint to 'Fall Heads Roll'. It positively skips along - yes, skips - with a great, joyous chorus, steely WHHING! flourishes like the sharpening of a knife, and Mark E Smith hammering out his lines with marked clarity. You can hear the message clear in his satisfyingly pugnacious bellow that punctuates 'Fall Heads Roll' - all is well in the realms of The Fall.

2003's 'Real New Fall LP' seems to have brought The Fall to a whole new audience, and given a bit of a prod to some of the balding old guard, currently busying themselves selling mortgages around the nation. A few years back, in the dark times pre-'Unutterable', who'd have thought that in 2005 Mark E Smith would be reading out the November football scores on primetime BBC?

While 'Fall Heads Roll' as a whole might not quite scale the heights of 'The Real New Fall LP', but there's no doubt that elements of it are up there with it.

'What About Us' is an address to deceased deviant doctor Harold Shipman that's all chipper "baba baba babbaba ba" shouts and judicious use made of Elena's urgent keyboard over Spencer Birtwistles rumbling drums. 'Blindness', meanwhile, has a mean clanking riff that refuses to relent for the song's entire seven minutes, and 'Clasp Hands' is a cheery jig. But as well as this trio and 'I Can Hear...', you've got album opener 'Ride Away', as jaunty a ditty as they've recorded in years, oom-papping along over a simple one-two beat and electronic squirls, Mark E Smith's "hey heys" winkingly cheeky. Then we're cracking straight into 'Pacifying Joint' where, again, Eleni Smith's synthesisers zip fruitily over the kind of simple, dirge guitars that The Fall do so well. 'Early Days Of Channel Fuehrer' even employs subtle acoustic guitar, the faintest glimmer of a country twang, and Mark E Smith singing with a hint of sadness in his voice. It's odd that the kind of song that most bands would consider to be a stylistic staple is, in The Fall's hands, an interesting diversion.

If 'Fall Heads Roll' had been limited to the above alone, with perhaps a couple others - 'Breaking The Rules' and the mendacious quiver of final track 'Trust In Me', say, - it'd have been nigh on perfect. But 'Assume' meanders through some good, gritty noise, but doesn't quite find a sure path, and neither do the two tracks which bookend it; 'Aspen' and 'Aspen Reprise' - these could have been done without. But these gripes aside, it's clear that in his second half century as leader of The Fall, Mark E Smith still has both creative mind and gimlet eyes lodged firmly on his shoulders.

Original Link

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review by: Tinymixtapes
reviewer: grigsby
Album Value: (4/5)

First of all, I must confess that I do love The Fall. Whether I am 'in love' with The Fall I will not disclose to you, dear reader, but the point remains that this evaluation will take place with utmost Fall-centricity. As such, the perennial difficulty with any Fall album is expectation. Last year brought us the frequently brilliant, always good The Real New Fall LP - and, I admit, I was hoping this year for The Real New Fall LP Part Two, but I didn't get it. Such are the joys of The Fall, though, as I instead got something I didn't even know I had wanted.

We'll start off with the big one. As anyone who follows The Fall knows, quite a buzz has been building up around "Blindness," as it has appeared on both Interim and the Peel Sessions box set. Regardless of how this version stacks up to its counterparts, it is the most singularly brilliant track The Fall has come up with in many, many years. Returning to that old Fall formula of 'the long song,' we get seven minutes of repetition that is truly right up there with the classic "NWRA." Meaner and tougher-sounding than long Fall songs of old, Smith demonstrates the magic that can make seven minutes of listening to the same riff seem like far too short a time.

With such an absolute classic right in the middle, how does the rest of the album stack up?

The first half, though beginning with a mystifying but satisfying quasi-reggae number, shows a band that wants action, speed, and propulsion. There are three rockers cut from the same cloth as "Theme From Sparta F.C.," which is just fine with me. In their midst is the requisite 'quiet one,' and even there the rhythm section sounds unwilling to sit still.(...)

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review by: Mark's Record Reviews
reviewer: Mark Prindle
Album Value: (7/10)

Continuing The Fall's 28-year history of perplexing all expectations, nearly the same exact line-up that recorded one of the band's most well-received and consistently hooky records ever (The Real New Fall Album) returns three years later with one of the band's absolute weakest studio releases -- tied with The Infotainment Scan for overall lack of consistency, though this album is longer with more good songs (and more bad, but hey) so it's definitely the superior purchase. At any rate, how disappointed can you get in a band whose 'worst album ever' still deserves a 7/10 on any decently-eared music fan's scale? If you're that kind of asshole, go listen to Public Image Ltd's "Disappointed" and slam your head in a piano.

First things -- there is nothing overtly 'weak' about the band's performance on this record. They play with tons of energy, good humor and varied quirky guitar and organ tones, plus Mark's voice is getting even odder in its old age. Confidence abounds as well, with no trepidation in the performances whatsoever. The production is equally strong, providing that raw, crisp and loud rock and roll sound and making sure that every instrument is audible and zesty, nothing is digitally smoothed over ala Infotainment Scan, and there's never an issue of over-trebliness or lo-fi rigmarole a ler Dragnet.

The problem lies with the songwriting. Or rather... the refusal to do any. Half of these riffs are generic, cliched chord sequences pulled from mid-60s garage rock songs. And since Mark just says everything as usual, there's no vocal melodies either. If you're unconcerned by originality in songwriting, you'll love this record because it sounds GREAT. I unfortunately can't ignore the lazy fact that "Pacifying Joint" is E-G-A, "What About Us" is E-A-G, "Assume" is A-C-A-G, "Youwanner" is Bflat-A-E, and "Blindness" is SEVEN AND A HALF MINUTES of G-Bflat-F. And I'm aware that it's easy to go back through the Fall's history and pick plenty of songs that only have two or three chords, but these particular chord progressions are so dated and overused throughout the history of garage rock, it's an embarrassment to hear The Ever-Creative Fall relying on them in 2005 of all years. It's the same kind of crap you can find on any of these retro-garage CDs on Estrus and Gearhead and labels like that. Add to these five retreads a two-minute 'reprise' of an earlier song on the record and a cover of The Move's "I Can Hear The Grass Grow" ruined by Mark's warbliest, least melodic vocals EVER, and that's an entire half of the album down the somewhat disappointing drain.(...)

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review by: Adrian Album's Reviews
reviewer: Adrian Denning
Album Value: (8.5/10)

The only change in line-up I can detect from the previous Fall album proper is the fact they have a different bass-player now. For The Fall, this is a time of stability unknown since the days of Hanley, Scanlon and co. In addition to this, you know what? This version of The Fall are great. The band are on a roll, giving sterling live performances and now creating a run of recent albums that have nearly all been uniformly excellent. Still, a few of these songs have been doing The Fall rounds for a while now. 'Clasp Hands' and 'Blindness' to name but two have demanded to be included on a fall album proper for a good year, at least. 'Clasp Hands' is sterling, very catchy and has proper Fall guitar lines. 'Blindness' is based on 'Chicago Now' from 1990s 'Extricate' and lasts for seven and a half minutes. It sits slap bang in the middle of this latest Fall LP and sounds superb. The distorted bass sound is glorious, the band just really do sound utterly magnificent. The two songs i've discussed are not however, the finest songs from this LP. Song five is titled 'Assume' and although fails to make much literal lyrical sense to me, is one of the finest pieces of Fall music I can think of. Again, Ben Pritchard, the geetar man, does great things. The new bass player keeps his distorted bass sound which works really well. MES has a lot to say and a lot to say that needs interpretation, but boy, do those words strung together sound great. Another mighty highlight higher than either 'Clasp Hands' or 'Blindness' has to be the ultra catchy 'I Can Hear The Grass Grow'. A simple enough song, but here, enhanced by MES and enhanced by a kick-ass sounding Fall group of musicians. Deserved to be number 22 at least in the singles charts. At least. We can dream of a parallel universe. Uh.
(...)

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