The Fall
Ersatz G.B.
Release Date: Nov 22, 2011
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock
Record label: Cherry Red
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Album Review: Ersatz G.B. by The Fall
Fairly Good, Based on 12 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
With a studio album each year since the punk era broke, I was wondering, as this year neared its close, if The Fall would deliver its annual contribution to my not-so-short shelf. I’ve been listening to this Northern English band before their albums appeared in the U.S., and their career has found them on many labels, with some records never released overseas, others released in the U.S., and most re-released over and over, adding (for better or not so much) to their legacy. Live, they prove unpredictable, and within a studio, they prove recognizably innovative if often infuriating in their truest commitment to punk’s iconoclasm.
Based on rating 4.0/5
Review Summary: 29 not out for Smith & Co.Whisper it quietly, but The Fall, a group not renowned for stability throughout a tumultuous 30+ year history, have plotted a course that has veered sharply into more secure waters over recent years. Of course, things would not be the same without at least some friction and tension. After a number of spats with former record label and home of the wannabe hipsters, Domino Records, the group have taken the circus and camped in the grounds of Cherry Red records for the release of their 29th studio LP.
Based on rating 4/5
“[i]I’m so sick of [a]Snow Patrol[/a]/And where to find Esso lubricant[/i]”, growls a phlegm-riddled throat atop of a riff so caustic it could corrode asbestos. And there’s not even the faintest chance that such a stonking non sequitur could have germinated anywhere but the noggin of [b]Mark E Smith[/b]. For while lesser mortals still pilfer from [a]The Fall[/a]’s handbook, he remains forever several pages ahead.
Based on rating B
Ersatz G.B. is The Fall’s 29th album. And with so many distinctive elements to their music – the ever-present Mark E. Smith, on whom most of the band’s writing falls, that frenetic post-punk energy, and the garbled, often subversive, offensive, or disgusting lyrics – it becomes difficult to write about one album without placing it in the context of the others.
Based on rating 7/10
Considering that they are fronted by a man who believes that routine is “the enemy of music”, The Fall are going through an unnervingly stable phase. The first couple of dates of their latest UK tour were a bit of a shambles, with Mark E. Smith wandering offstage at regular, long intervals apparently due to some kind of foot ailment. Yet the band managed to pull it together with later gigs going down the usual storm.
Based on rating 7/10
How do you review a new album by The Fall? It seems obligatory to mention somewhere at the start the fact that this is the nth album in the band’s lengthy and prolific career. So to oblige, I can reveal that this is indeed the 29thalbum The Fall has released since their debut, Live At The Witch Trials, in 1979. With most bands who have survived for so long it is possible to divide their output (albeit sometimes arbitrarily) into early, middle and late periods.
Based on rating 3/5
The unique and dispersed thinker Slavoj Žižek has referred to the phenomenon of the voice as having, implicitly, an obscene, traumatic dimension derived from the fact that it presents itself as a non-organic feature, originated somewhere in between the body, a freely-floating foreign entity. Through 29 studio albums (plus a countless number of EPs, singles, live albums, and compilations), Mark E. Smith (The Fall’s lead singer and only permanent member) has managed to achieve a skillful domestication of this ‘object-voice,’ projecting it into a tangible plane, taking its disturbing qualities and making them the source of the band’s identity, leading to an immediately recognizable configuration of himself as a ‘voice-subject.
Based on rating 2/5
Seminal is a dangerous term for band because, fundamentally, it ends up meaning your whole shtick is so regulated and predictable you might as well be dead. So it is with the Fall, whose 317th studio album, or whatever it is, has absolutely no chance of reaching beyond the people who dutifully queued up for their 316th album: everyone already knows what to expect and, largely, they'd be right. Mask Search and Cosmos 7 are both rumbling rockabilly roustabouts with Mark E Smith's gruesomely liquid growl spooned over the top like a cold, rather unpleasant custard, while Greenway is what the Metallica and Lou Reed album would sound like had they all spent four decades living in grinding poverty in a wet shed.
Based on rating 2.2/10
When John Peel said that he was incapable of telling if the Fall had ever made a bad record, that had something to do with the fact that they mostly hadn't until fairly recently, and more to do with the spell that Mark E. Smith's unwavering attitude casts over the faithful. There's no other sound like Smith's spittle-flecked snarl, and no other lyrical sensibility like his; he's never allowed the Fall to rest on its history, or its listeners to get too comfortable.
Opinion: Excellent
He's a sneering bastard with a face like a tramp's street-crumpled duvet. His reputation for being a difficult character, whether you're a collaborator, journalist or acquaintance, precedes him in acres of newsprint. He has a cult status that he probably never asked for, but has been cursed with nonetheless. Now, he finds himself dishing spoken-word on a record of pugnacious rock blasted out by a backing band of tattooed bruisers.
Opinion: Mediocre
CAVEMAN “Coco Beware”. (Magic Man/Orgmusic).
Opinion: Poor
A poor LP that proves that Mark E. Smith alone does not The Fall make. Garry Mulholland 2011. There is a myth surrounding The Fall. It is of Mark E. Smith’s making, whether intentional or not. And that myth is that is that whoever plays the instruments in The Fall makes no difference. When you ….