The Fall – New Facts Emerge
Mark E Smith, the rigid enemy of all, brings LP 31.
To paraphrase a song off 2008’s Imperial Wax Solvent album, Mark E Smith is a 60-year-old man and he likes it. New Facts Emerge could be said to be business as usual: ie. it cannot be quantified, and pulses with raw music, stimulating confusion and a certain monstrous glee. This time, harsh metal riffs, country picking and random-sounding sonic embellishments provide the backdrop for Smith, his voice catarrhy or golem-like as he declares “stop shaking down those frogs” on the title track, collides Edgar Allen Poe, Snow White and slaughterhouse grunge on Couples Vs Jobless Mid 30s, and returns to the spirit of Container Drivers on the sympathetic Groundsboy. But none so great as the closing Nine Out Of Ten, a nine- minute north-west Maggot Brain wherein Smith talks album star ratings, life chances and broken rules, like some Faustian debtor trying to stave off the moment of truth.
