Your Future Our Clutter

The Fall don't give a fuck about fidelity. Mark E. Smith and company have never been afraid to put studio recordings next to pieces that were essentially muddy four-track sketches — cutting, pasting, and blending until an endpoint is reached. This very approach created dissonance between Smith and producer John Leckie during the recording of 1986's Bend Sinister, when at one point Smith purportedly wanted to use a cassette version of the album he had been listening to on a Walkman for the final mixing. Add to the fidelity issue that, since the mid-90s, Smith rallies behind him whatever musical thugs he's managed to find and it would seem a recipe for disaster. How can a band in a continuous state of aesthetic and personnel flux possibly crank out consistent work? Surprisingly, the last few albums have in fact been remarkably consistent — "Blindness," from Fall Heads Roll, is already a classic in the Fall canon, and 2008's Imperial Wax Solvent might be my favorite Fall album since 1993's The Infotainment Scan.