It was a quiet twelve months for The Fall between the release of Night of The Humerons for Record Store Day 2012 and the next again time any new product was in the shops. Indeed, it was Record Store Day 2013 when 1,500 copies of a 7″ single found their way onto various shelves and racks.
mp3: The Fall – Sir William Wray
mp3: The Fall – Jetplane
mp3: The Fall – Hittite Man
The now well-established quintet of MES (vocals), Peter Greenway (guitar), David Spurr (bass), Keiron Melling (drums) and Eleni Poulou (keyboards) were the musicians on board, and again it was Cherry Red Records on which it was released. All three songs would be included on the album Re-Mit, which came out a couple of weeks after RSD 2013.
I hadn’t heard any of these prior to pullling this post together. I was surprised to discover that they are quite diverse, which is something to behold given that The Fall had now, at this point, been making music for 35 years, but I feel that Jetplane is the only one worth repeated listens.
Having said that, a different version of Hittite Man was put out on Facebook (!!) just after the album was released, and is an improvement on the original.
mp3: The Fall – Hittite Man (alternate version)
This line-up of The Fall, it has to be said, sound quite professional and polished in many places but, to my ears, without the spark of the classic line-ups who have featured in past postings. Indeed, as you can hear best on the alternative version of Hittite Man, they are almost a bog-standard rock band. Or am I being unfair??
This series is drawing to its natural conclusion, and I’ve already decided what’s going to take its place on Sundays going forward. I hope most of you will be happy…..
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
I look forward to what is to come next.
I’ve enjoyed The Fall series. I can’t say I’m any further forward in extending my Fall listening – it’s still just the ‘hits’ but now, I do know more about the band(s), MES and the surrounding chaos.
I was a Fall obsessive from 79-85, and obviously regard that era as their imperial phase. Interesting to dip into what came subsequently, although a reminder why little of it grabbed my attention at the time. Feel there was more appealing stuff lurking on the albums than the singles in the 90s and 2000s.
Curious to see what comes next for my Sunday morning bacon sandwich, Wordle and VV ritual.
Enjoyed a year of Sundays of the Fall – Intrigued to what comes next!
In the pre-Brix era MES was part of the band, who made a fabulous post-punk racket. In the Brix era the band wrote some terrific melodic rock tunes that would have sounded good with anything but which got to another level due to MES’s iconic lyrics and delivery. In the post-Brix era it was always an assemblage of musicians of varying levels of competence who built a framework for MES to stand on, piss off, or knock down. Until he and they fell apart.
It’s been a hell of a series and a learning experience. At one point JC recommended Steve Hanley’s book, The Big Midweek, and I definitely second that emotion for anyone looking for some background behind the glorious noise.
Congratulations on reaching #50 in this series, JC. Whilst it’s fair to say that the quality of the music has been a case of diminishing returns, especially as we reached the 20th century output, that can definitely not be said of the writing. It’s been a fascinating, at times depressing but always engaging journey and an epic personal appraisal of the genius and horror that is/was MES. I’m looking forward to seeing how the series wraps up and then what comes next. Thank you!