In the brilliant Fall documentary, The Wonderful And Frightening World of Mark E Smith, the famous curmudgeon grumbled, ” There are all these bands saying,’We’re influenced by The Fall” .Fook off. That just means you’ve run out of fookin’ ideas. ” As ever, the wordsmith had a point. Many bands tried to emulate his stream-of-consciosness rants, and failed. Only The Fall sounded like The Fall.
These days though, there’s a whole bunch of UK indie bands who mumble or gripe over post -punk riffs. Yard Act (main image) Courting, Sleaford Mods and Dry Cleaning (pictured below) among others, all have mumbling vocalists offering rants or non -sequiturs. Frankly, it adds nothing new to the genre, and it makes me realise why I gravitate towards more experimental work.
While Dry Cleaning’s breakout single Scratchcard Lanyard pointed to something interesting, the debut album didn’t live up to its promise, and subsequent bands believe that if they yell or moan with megaphone vocals like deranged bingo callers, they’re emulating MES.. But they’re wrong. They simply don’t possess his unique world view. Probably just as well, though. He had some rum ideas, that one. Bad speed and booze binges, no doubt. But his legacy remains.
Hit The North 