Day 61: Sinister Popes...

Here's a request, and it's claimed it's a hard one. I agree, but only because it's so different.



Song: Papal Visit
Album: Room To Live
Year: 1982

So this is what sounds like a highly-improvised soundscape to me, there's some scratchy violin actually played by MES, some footstep-sounding percussion, some industrial noises and faint squalks of feedback in the background far off. The main focus of this is the lyrics, which focus on an account of a papal visit, incredibly sinister and unnerving.

The zombie-like delivery adds an air of unease to the track, lines are uttered as fact in a calm, unwavering voice about an actual papal visit. I think it's a bout disbelief that people could be duped into making a fuss, and just general thoughts about it. As with everything in the wonderful and frightening world of this band, normal items and situations take on unusual traits, yellow-white umbrellas for example.

The sinister lines come in the form of 'helicopter strips the land' and specifics like 'the first impression will be the last'. Some say this song is a focus on the evil of the church, the uneasiness it creates is similar to the unease people get when broaching this subject, the idea of 'human trash' fits in with this, but again, this is just conjecture, it could be to do with anything.

It's generally disturbing as a whole, the drone of the violin combined with the unusual percussion and Mark's barely-there vocals mumbling about lay bread and assassinations simply add to this. This whole track actually sounds years ahead, it sounds like stuff that improv groups like Sunburned Hand Of The Man put together now, washes of nothingness that build to create terrifying beasts, the real joy of experimentation within music.

Comparisons must have been made to The Velvet Underground with this track, the post-modern lyrics and highly obtuse sounds would suggest this, but I would argue MES would not have consciously ripped them off, I have faith that this is a wholly original track, it creaks and stammers to an end, to close what, after all, is the strangest Fall release ever, surely?

Day 36: A Moody Blues cassette on the dashboard!

I haven't done anything off this wonderful album yet, shame as I really love the rushed nature producing some of the oddest arrangements The Fall ever recorded.



Song: Room To Live
Album: Room To Live (Undilutable Slang Truth)
Year:1982

Okay, so this album was recorded as a quick follow-up to Hex Enduction Hour, Smith forcing the group to record more songs than they intended, they originally entered the Cargo Studios in Rochdale to record a single. In a Beefheart-esque way, some members were excluded from certain recordings, resulting in some of the songs sounding a bit unfocused, but it all jitters along with a cursory air that is fantastic. Smith claims some of the tracks are simply him and Karl Burns double-tracked, which I can believe, the album also features a member of the Fall famous for just playing 16 seconds of guitar on "Hard Life In Country". Arthur Kadmon was dismissed straight after, bonkers, but more on that when I blog that song.

So the music here bounces along just nicely, its a bit more restrained than Hex Enduction Hour (recorded previously the same year) but still rings with invention and a little hint of madness. This features saxophone, which farts along nicely with an unmistakable Mark Riley riff (he left following the tour of New Zealand and Australia about five months later) and the drums keep a usual, metronomic beat throughout.


The lyrics jump out on this one, some general observational parlance from MES here, as ever, references to cultural happenings feature, the stand-out being a "DHSS Volvo estate/Right outside my door/With a Moody Blues cassette on the dashboard" I know the type of car, you see them still, nearly 20 years later, just filled with tat, I almost want to own one, they are almost anti-car, they become great big slabs of previous owners' histories with cig ends, dog smells and god knows what kept in the boot, most of them still have cassette/radios too. I'm not sure if MES like the Moody Blues at all, I think they're pretty good in an inoffensive way, not bad at all.

Elsewhere he talks of chasing women, which he claims "makes meat out of the soul" we could possibly double-reference that with Slates, Slags, etc as I covered a few days ago. The idea of the title Room To Live could mean several things, he keeps saying "I just want a room to live" but does he mean a literal room or room generally? The list-like nature of the lyrics suggests the latter, maybe feeling hemmed in, surrounded by people, but as he says in a line later on "there's no hate to the point I give" which suggests that while he may be uncomfortable with his situation, a claustrophobic existence perhaps, he is happy to let it carry on.

One last thing, I'd love to know what "a reporter with no wig" is a reference too, the mind boggles.