Overlooked Classics: The Fall- Bend Sinister

Mid-eighties Fall were, as ever, a strange proposition, fast becoming a cult band; yet always wilfully on the sidelines, casting caustic barbs at the more banal elements of pop culture. So it was with the ninth album, the brilliant Bend Sinister. It was named after the Nabokov novel. Even the cover points to the kind of creative claustrophobia contained within, as MES seems to fade into the ghostly ether. It’s like a parody of the Warhol template, taking a recognisable figure and simultaneously repeating the image until it becomes first distorted and then obsolete, albeit lower tech.

The cover of The Other Half’s ‘Mr Pharmacist ‘ is forever inextricably linked with them, and let’s face it, Smith knows his way around a cover (bludgeon, or play it straight) and it is by far the most spritely and conventional thing on offer here. Elsewhere, it’s as suffocating as a boa constrictor (‘R.O.D’, ‘Gross Chapel (British Grenadiers)”, ‘Dktr Faustus’ ) where both music and lyrics are submerged in a murky swampland.

And yet, and yet… John Peel’s assertion that The Fall were “always different, always the same” was becoming increasingly prescient. ‘Terry Waite Sez’ and ‘Shoulder Pads’ (both versions) had the tang and zest of Brix’s songwriting, striking that sweet spot between indie grit and pure pop sensibility: still obstinate as fuck, though.

It often remains overlooked by even die-hard Fall fans, but I like its inherent contradictions, messiness and acid humour. “Watch out, makers of fads, it’s MES in shoulder pads”, Smith deadpanned in the whistley, shuffling jangle, surely a companion piece to ‘Gut Of The Quantifier’ with its easy evisceration of insipid pop trends. I can just imagine his withering takedown of Swifties and the ghastly Wet Leg, were he still with us.