Track Listing

1. Over Over
2. Reformation
3. Fall Sound
4. White Line Fever
5. Insult
6. My Doctor Never
7. Coaches And Horses
8. The Usher
9. Wright Stuff
10. Scenano
11. Das Boot
12. Bad Stuff
13. Systematic Abuse
14. Outro

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42320 in Music
• Released on: 2007-02-12
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 61 minutes

CD Description
Released in early 2007, REFORMATION POST T.L.C. marks the Fall's third chapter in its revitalized run on the Narnack label. Even more notably, it signals yet another incarnation of the long-running British post-punk act, with the album recorded shortly after much of the band abruptly abandoned notoriously difficult frontman/founder Mark E. Smith and his wife, keyboardist/vocalist Eleni Poulou, while on tour in the United States. Although the songs on T.L.C., performed with an impromptu cadre of American musicians, don't quite carry the heft or precision of those on preceding albums, their lo-fi, off-the-cuff quality is charming in its own way, with the lumbering "Reformation" (a clear cousin of FALL HEADS ROLL's fierce "Blindness") and the hard-charging "Fall Sound", revealing that, thankfully, the ever-ranting Smith shows no signs of slowing down or shutting up.

Customer Reviews

I think it's over now, I think it's beginning
Perhaps taking the title of 2005's excellent Fall Heads Roll literally, Mark E Smith made the entirely expected move of firing the entire band - except wife and keyboardist, Elena Poulou - before embarking on their 28th year of recording.

Members of Los Angeles bands Darker My Love and The Hill form the latest iteration of The Fall and the opening track, Over! Over!'s, mantra of "I think it's over now, I think it's ending. I think it's over now, I think it's beginning" could easily be a slogan for the band's revolving door recruitment policy.

Even for Smith, Reformation Post TLC is a uniquely bilious album. A version of Merle Haggard's White Line Fever recalls the kind of mangled country and western that Smith clearly finds so fascinating, while Insult Song - where Smith adopts a redneck accent to spin a silly tale about Captain Beefhart - veers between the inspired and the baffling.

The Wright Stuff allows Smith to offer his take on I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, while Das Boat's nine minutes of electronic commotion and muttering demonstrate the knotty, cantankerous and perplexing side of Smith's persona.

Duly disorientating and typically slanted, Reformation Post TLC is the equal of anything in The Fall's gargantuan canon.

Same old Fall
As always- another year, another reliably good Fall record. On a par with Fall Heads Roll. Saw them play the final gig at Hammersmith Palais earlier this year (before it was demolished to make way for flats); great live band,- especially Dave Spurr on bass. A multi-layered record which demands repeat listens before it exposes its quality, fully.Excellent.

This is Fall for those who like the Fall
Admittedly this is not the Fall album to act as an introduction to the canon. For that role I would suggest 'The Wonderful and Frightening World of...'. But nonetheless, for those lucky enough to have been steeped in the music of Mark E Smith, I would say that here, yet again, is the sound of someone who appears to be launching his music career, eager to please and brimming with the quirkiness which is vital to rock music. Others, jaded and grown contemptuous with fame, may grow stale; but Mark E Smith obviously still loves his art. This is quality material, produced by an artist at the height of his mischievous powers.