Oh! The Fall John Peel Sessions box set! OH! you guys.

(Session 22 because of your write-up on the poll thread, I must add!)

The Fall throwing rose-petals at the crowd is indescribably awesome, which is probably why they did it

Sidebar: the original "Hey! Student," then "Hey Fascist". MES has a long memory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zltaTC1iY2A

xpost - I'd say so yes, although I'm not sure how widely my opinion of 22 is shared - personally I think it's timeless. The last three sessions are all pretty good fwiw.

really, really wish they'd done a) a proper Levitate session and b) an Unutterable session

b) is the single biggest oversight in their career, actually

Two Librans
W.B. (or Sons Of Temperance, or Serum, or Way Round)
Ketamine Sun
Dr Buck's Letter

ty

actually swap Ketamine Sun and Dr Buck's Letter in that order - it's usually the third track what is the extended avant-nightmare, and the fourth a tuneful rave-up

That five-year gap was very odd. Peel mentioned something about it, saying there were certain differences, without really elaborating, but that it had been silly not to have them in the studio for that long. They were always great for either increasing the expectation for the album (without actually spoiling any of the album versions, because they were usually so different) or providing a delightful development of the album. Made a big difference.

Which ones? Hmmm, probably WB, a strangely amazing, 10 minute version of Hot Runes or something, a slightly disappointing Two Librans (but with great extra lyrics) and a cover of Ball of Confusion. (<---one that Hanley always said he wanted to cover, so it wd be typical Smith perversity to do it once he'd left.) I could see them doing a stunning session version of Midwatch as well.

Hahaha, I actually typed Midwatch 1953 instead of Dr Buck's Letter then decided I wouldn't get away with it

(Midwatch really is among my Fall favourites, as I hope you realise! OK, it can go into Fantasy Unutterable Session)

Yep, I'm a big fan of that as well. Pretty certain it was linked with this Glowboys film.

I haven't seen it, but there's a bit on youtube -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghh2vlPU2Tk

He Pep! - Starts with that awesome electronic drawl that lets you know Ms Nagle is about. Snaky glorious bass (Hanley's last session?) and some blasts of scuzzy guitar. Stops starts, semi-ska beat, electronic benzine, growling together like a terrible nebula, and then Brix, screeching as MES rants amiably beneath a torrent of incongruous chaotic brilliance. The Light User Syndrome had too many members, but this was probably a good thing. There are so many musicians in there, fighting for dominion. Great guitar. Scanlon's last session too? Overpowering sheen of barely-audible keyboard fog-throttle. Drums don't know but they feel. OK, this is fucking amazing.

Oleano - Massive bass again. Harmonic-strummed metallic guitar. Then that one-note peal this song is better known for. Delay. The other guitar comes in late a couple of times. Everything exists to build tension. Organ sounds. Not really anything like the original; much, much better in fact. INSANE SCREAM FROM BRIX as the bass launches into messy overdrive. The destroyers circle a stricken submarine and prepare to launch the final charge. All is sonar and despair. In a final moment of clarity, guitars burst through the night, and then stop.

Chilinist - Dirty guitars! Really dirty guitars. In truth this session was only ever going to be amazing and I am surprised at myself for not realising this earlier. It has the largest number of great Fall musicians on it of all the sessions. It has almost all the *great* members full stop! Rouses itself with those swaggering keyboards and with Brix taking rant duties for once. The guitars get more and more ferocious, it seems. After a while it stops, and then starts again but without keyboards. Then the keyboards come back. This is possibly going on too long while doing too little? Certainly not as compelling as the two before it. Oh, but now the weird quiet bit. Which is abandoned quickly for the garage-rock mainframe to return. Not their finest but it's got a lot of Brix, if you like Brix!

The City Never Sleeps - Huge keys this time, on some horn preset, but with a pop beat and EVEN MORE Brix! She's actually singing properly on this one too. The keys discover a string preset. It's all very basic, also restless. The Fall really do sound like a 90's tweepop band here. Sort of. It's good, better than the last one, although given the first two songs this session really hasn't attacked like I hoped it would. I guess that's what too many cooks do - they prevent intensity being retained for too long. What intensity it was, though.

First two songs definitely kill on this session. I really like the whole 'I think like you do, I act like you do, I thought I was you' mirror vox on Chisellers as well. One of my best mates is inordinately fond of the Nancy Sinatra cover so I tend to have a sneaking fondness for it as well.

Next one was Hanley's last iirc.

As well as well. But yes, the opening part to U Pep was usually called 'Tunnel' live, and was put on the front of the Chisellers on the album. The 'cold dark winter on the 17th of December (September?)' bit was also put on the end of the album version, He Pep. Difficult to know whether I prefer Brix's scream on Oleano or Smith's coughing/vomiting/laughing attack on the album.

I remember when this came out, it was a wet and dark part of the year, and the session totally fit my mood. Loved it at the time, first two songs still rate highly.

D.I.Y. Meat - Three really REALLY encouraging chords! Then Karl Burns with one of his best-ever intros and YES that bass! The madness has returned and we can hear feedback, guitars on fire, crazy drumming, MES buried and having to fight, which is where he attacks best from - the crypt. Even a manic laugh. But the star is Burns, mostly. Well, the whole thing's righteous. Maybe not QUITE as good as He Pep! but it doesn't have to be; it's got the sound. It's got the vibe. Opening Peel Session tracks, they set the vibe.

Spinetrak - The guitars are so vicious I'm beginning to wonder if Scanlon's on this one too. Loud and mean. Sounding vaguely out-of-control and all the better for it. The better moments of the Light User Syndrome-era sessions, it seems, are notable for their use of bass to anchor some of The Fall's more visceral careening. Bass is kept very, very simple, rest is allowed to crash about a-drunken. The song itself is OK, not The Fall's best.

Spencer - If this is the song that winds up on Levitate as Spencer Must Die, then it's barely recognisable. Squelchy synths, bass lope, Burns again unleashed, fucking animal on drums. But in slow-motion. It's a mess, this one, but inevitably I like it. Has slightly mystical, incantational qualities to it as well, which again were mined brilliantly on Levitate. Ah, and there's the bassline. Yeah, it's the same song, sort of. Nascent, no less obscure. Great! Guitar touches in extended outro are an added bonus.

Beatle Bones 'N' Smokin' Stones - begins with very silly MES yelping but as it's a cover I guess this has to be silly. Oh gosh it's very silly indeed! Until the drums come in, then it's distinctly un-silly garage-rock. Again, not the best session, and the highs don't quite reach those of He Pep! and Oleano - I'd give the MVP award to Spencer for being really weird and compelling, although Burns' performance in D.I.Y. Meat is genuinely superb. This song? It's kinda going past. Still a minute left! What can they conjure? A big heavy 60's-style psych outro, by the looks of it. Certainly that's what the mantra-like bass and Byrds-inflected guitar seem to think.

Er, Hanley's last one the next one... Get it right, GR. Not a huge fan of this session tbh. Shd listen to it again.

Calendar - Finally, the Levitate-era session, an album which remains an all-time favourite of mine despite, um, everything. Nagle sounds jovial on keys, bass is a bit subdued, but the Era Of Electronic Madness is in so this doesn't matter much; the bass-tone is clean but there's scuzz in this apparatus. Not really much or any lead guitar. Oh, there's some except it's being tortured at knifepoint by a surrealist. Levitate wasn't a good time for conventional guitarists. Hints of a genius new-wave break for about two seconds in there, silenced. Nagle goes catatonic. Pretty good. YEEEAS.

Touch Sensitive - Everyone slags off this version. It's a bit slower and bassier than the Marshall Suite version; if it had appeared on Levitate I still think it'd have banged. The chorus is in a minor-key, it seems! They changed that one, at least, when they had a guitarist who dared show his head above the parapet. Ah, NOW it's a bit more major. This version's more Cramps, more rockabilly, more sinuous. The other version's more pop, more likely to be used in a commercial. And while this one won't set the blood racing, it'll groove into your mind with a seamless grunt. It's quite ominous! Maybe this song shouldn't be ominous. Ah, who cares.

Masquerade - Atmospheric, slightly clumsily-played Nagle intro...then fuck me acid house! Hahahaha! This is even more technofied than the original! "This is new...fresh"...sounds like some sort of ironic comment on 90's dance? Sincere? What's even meant any more. It's less focused and intrinsically kinetic than the original, but it's a really, really odd beast. Could do with being a bit faster. Or shorter? Ah, the bass drops back for a bit. But then returns exactly as before. Three minutes left. Three minutes! Three minutes in which I could lament the fact they never did a Peel session of 4 1/2 Inch. Or fucking fucking Hurricane Edward. Or Ol' motherchristing Gang. Or Levitate itself. Or Ten Houses Of Eve. But hey - this is sorta getting better as it goes on. Not enough to make up for the fact that The Fall recorded an album of absolute genius and then refused to play any of the brainblowers in session. Oh man, to hear Hurricane Edward done in a Peel Session. Bass drops out, keys take over, is oddly arresting. This should have been shorter, weirder.

Jungle Rock - I'm apprehensive because catchy as it is, it's pretty much a one-chord unchanging drawl made by its electronic textures and its brevity on Levitate, and here it's six and a half minutes long. Nagle's keys are pretty awesome in this one, so I'm not worried yet. Bass could be more prominent. Ah wait, there's some mentalist guitar too! Somewhere in there. Again, maybe, it's been slowed down to make it more...tantric? Guitar sounds detuned but not menacing. It sounds bewildered, as if MES has blindfolded it and then told it to try and escape from the studio. Ah, that's more like it. The guitar thrashes around for air, aid, anything. It's strangled by MES' dogged vocals and Nagle's revenant shriek. I'd rate this above Masquerade, in that it's not really a missed opportunity but quite an effective reading of one of Levitate's lesser tracks. They're kinda making the most of this one! Weird choice but it's insistent, bizarre and authentically freaked-out. Really not the worst session, although if listened to without patience or understanding it could be construed as such. I can sense the bacchanale, so I'm in favour.

OK, now for *the one*

Bound Soul One - Whooaaaa, what's happening? Really tinny drums and guitar, really rich and powerful echoed MES vocals; utterly disorientating. Garage ballad gone through a bad grinder and lad gallant begged blood but glad bagged his gall-bladder. Nagle's given a bit of licence to go wild on keys, and there's a really pretty background melody breaking through the percussive vortex, leading to a section of music I cannot rationally explain but only enjoy. I think there's every single nervous response I can have to art trying to be elicited here. The song has no choice but to fade away and leave me wondering, delirious. Wow.

Antidotes - LOVE the original, am so stoked for this. MES yowl, guitar played childlike tantrum...not the smashing chord-certainty but something echoey, percussive, bled from a gutter. There's banging, violence, fever. This is music from the edge of heart-attack. MES seems to sense this and yells for his life. In the background hover dark forces, as the percussion begins to rip itself apart in fifteen different directions and things oh my god it's overwhelming WHAT EVEN IS THIS it is not music it is not anything SAVE ME drums save me but the violence the warfare is waged on by THIS IS AN UNBELIEVABLE REIMAGINING critical faculty itself is ripped to shreds I wasn't expecting this I wasn't expecting anything like this but this is incalculably more impressively mind-damagingly infinite than what I had been expecting and now I'm full stream but this stream is only the stream of molten brain-bits taken apart by music that is barely of this earth. And then, it all pulls away to reveal the Stygian undersoundworld which Smith's mind is calling from. He yowls. In pain? Or in knowledge?

Shake-Off - Yikes, I'm beginning to understand this drill. He sounds fucking poisonous. I feel fucking poisoned. Death-rattle guitars everywhere. I don't know how this was made, why this was made, whether this was made almost. It sounds like a cantilever bridge engineered to fall down when you're right in the middle of it, looking down, thinking that maybe these keyboards are too much for your pitiful

This Perfect Day - Alien, scuzzy, garage-drawl, fearless. Yes, correct, this session is SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY. It's called me from some grotesque area and it doesn't give a fuck about music. It's not music, it's poetic expression of the arts of sound. Mesh-made mad and mind-muddle mead, mode. Glugged down with a kick in the fucking pants in store, always. I know there will be one here. I gird my loins and - it kicks.

jesus frickin' christ

'Antidotes' is in the PS Top Five, no questions asked

'Bound Soul One' is really not far behind

And yeah, the first two songs of the first LUS session are *great* as well.

I might as well get the last two over and done with...

...but not before

LAMENT FOR LOST UNUTTERABLE SESSION

Unutterable
Fucking best The Fall album
And no Peel Session

Theme From Sparta FC - Kicks in after one descending riff, and sounds a damn sight more conventional, beefy and rock-tastic than Session 22. Admittedly not as flat-out mind-exploding but hey this isn't a mind-exploder, it's an aggressive pop-song about football and it features a woman MES is still married to and making music with now in 2010. So there's stability, there's future. There's a Mark Lamarr reference, which is cheeky and not apocalyptic. The background vocals work really well in this version, and the organ-drone even better. God, I really like the keys in this one. It's a really bright and volatile reading of a kickass song. I wouldn't kick it off my stereo.

Contraflow - I like the original, mostly for its breakneck energy, and this one seems slightly slower, more self-contained. Maybe that's a fake-out, though? Maybe it'll leap at my throat NOW? Not quite but it's getting growlier. Someone else gets a go at the vocals at one point, which is a nice touch. Then after the interlude, the drums seem to come back stronger, which may be an illusion or may be an intentional act. Not a necessary version, but not a bad one either. Then we get 20 seconds of Krautrock at the end, as a sorta treat. And a silly comedy ending!

Groovin' With Mr Bloe - Green-Eyed Loco Man - A nice, bass-driven ditty to kick off, with some great fucked-up vocal effects and, again, silly performances to entertain us. A good tune, too. And then...HAHA that's an AWESOME way to go into Green-Eyed Loco Man! The way this great big dollop of overdriven guitar just lumbers into the fray like a wrestler absolutely intent on clotheslining everyone else in the ring. It's again a sorta slo-mo reading of the song, but it has grace. And the way the guitars go a bit bonkers in the second chorus is pleasurable. Really lush guitars! Maybe the guitars are the reason someone voted for this session in that Peel Sessions poll. It's certainly imposing, if not especially jawdropping.

Mere Pseud Mag. Ed. - The Fall plays...The Fall! Given the number of Hex Enduction bandmembers in this Fall, I'd legitimately describe this as a cover. And it's a pretty good one, all gnarly and atonal and stop-start and virulent. And it mounts like prime Fall. The choral vocals towards the end are like some sort of glorious arrhythmic punchline to the performance, which is genuinely quite something. Definitely the best from this session. Very, very nice indeed. Old Fall hasn't been disgraced, not that The Fall ever disgraces itself truly.

...and...

...you are about to chronicle 4 of the finest Fall performances of the last 20 years...

Clasp Hands - Starts nice and perky, like the first Peel Session really. Then, it pauses and comes back even jauntier, a sort of theme-song vibe. Canyons and shootouts, it's the Midwest. American music. There's a reflective bit. Actually the reflective bit is my favourite bit so far, and it looks like developing. "I was reflected" - it's in the lyrics too. Then after that little pause for succour, it's back roistering. Briefly. Maybe this one doesn't really have a narrative; it's more of a showcase for a tight and reasonably confident band under harness. Or at least this song's purpose is to show the reins before galloping into the wild. Yes, I have seen which track is next. I'm expecting something of a ride. As far as this song is concerned, it's hit a nice build-up section, which has now been supplanted by surprisingly and gratifyingly dirty bass. Which is detuning itself out of existence amid electronic buzz. I like this track. It's an intro but it works and it has set my neurons to 'ready and willing'.

Blindness - Here we go. There's that beat which is one of the best beats ever. And there's...shit, there's a FIERCE droning BASS guitar! Right in my ears. And then...he speaks. Things howl and scream in the background. There's a pervasive air of electricity coursing through everything, the studio, John Peel, everything. There's noise. There's light. There's respite. There are some fucking fabulous lyrics. Then it all kicks back in and that bass is having wild dirty sex with the mixing-board again. Then a bit with syncopated strumming of chords. Whereupon all sorts of din shoots about beneath. It's one of MES' better latter-day vocal performances, and it's given a very different dynamic to the album version by the sheer drone, the unblinking fluorescent glare of it all. Then the final roundelay is a summation of all of its strengths. Am enthused.

What About Us? - A sea of guitars is always promising. This already sounds like classic Fall, at least classic Peel Session fare. Is his voice being fed through a thingy? Ooh I do hope so. It's coming together very forcefully. And again, Smith sounds very convinced, very inspired in his utterances. Even the backing vocals work. This has a real synergy to it; it manages to signify changes in momentum without really changing much but through sheer weight of sound. Again, the guitars are enormous, and they have both a crispness and a bite to them. Then in the last 90 seconds the bass powers through and decimates opposing warriors. Not the best Fall song, but given deluxe treatment. The end is mighty!

Wrong Place, Right Time - I Can Hear The Grass Grow - Cowbell! And it's a poppy, cheeky li'l Fall fuckabout to start off with. Sly, sense of humour, all that stuff. Minimal, taunting slightly in its promise of more. Drums with the lazy lope of a drug-taker. Then someone leaves a steam-valve open and things begin to spill in. Odd things. Noisy things which can't dissuade the players, yet. They play on. They are being gassed. Slowly they stop playing their instruments and start to drop dead. Then they turn into zombies and start playing their instruments again. Long Live The Fall! And now they're back to life as garage-rock-loving popstars, knocking out a classic number without losing that synergy, all backing vocals and bass grime. And, bizarrely, some sentimental wah-wah pedal. Then a thunderous middle-eight. It's a great tune and a great way for the band to parade out, one by one, playing the rock and roll MES was born to. But not before we've heard that middle-eight again! And now we parade out, but not without some errantly-recorded cymbal-hits reminding us precisely what The Fall is capable of...

...aaaaaand...

Job Search - MAD KEYS CHUGGING GUITARS OUT OF RHYTHM YES YES YES GOOD THIS IS L'ESPRIT DU LEVITATE but no really it is! Except very, VERY reflective. There's a lot of air, space in this one. The guitars may sound like steam-trains but the electro bleep has the quality of making everything seem light-headed and pensive. It's not headspinning, chock-full, death-inducing. It's gently disconnected, psychedelic. It's also very, very, very, very good. I actually prefer it as a piece to any of the Session 24 tracks proper. Really! It's much more my thing. Actually, if anything it sounds Unutterable-era. Small recompense for the biggest Peel Session omission. It has that Unutterable composure, that oddball surety mixed in amongst the rapid-fire rock discovery. It also has some of the best sounds I've heard on any Peel Session track. Superb, very superb. Unsettling but comforting. The last blast of a band and a man which used those two qualities in a violent but utterly understandable way to make us fall in love.

And recorded for John Peel's b'day iirc

It's fucking superb, like, way more than I was expecting. Everything I wanted from a short-form PS track.

Right, now I have to order the Sessions in terms of preference don't I? Maybe I'll pick a top 10 songs first.

My favorite Sessions:

--The one for Hex
--The one for Perverted
--The one for Middle Class Revolt
--The one for/before Heads Roll

The only one I've had to pick two songs for my potential Top 10 from is the (first) Hex session (Middle Mass and Hip Priest)

but now I am strongly considering two from the Bend Sinister session

Oh yeah shit the Bend session is another great one...

I'm going to have to choose 10 from 13 by the looks of it, or I'll just do a top 13

there's only one other session I've had to pick two from, and that's session 22 (Bound Soul One and Antidotes)

OK, tentative top 14:

1) AUSTRALIANS IN EUROPE (like, duh. words cannot summarise the joy this song imparts unto me)
2) Hip Priest (was an EXTREMELY close battle for second but this is...unreal music)
3) New Puritan (in which a dude my age lays down the law. like, THE LAW. and the law is laid down. and it is the law.)
4) Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers (the original is so, so good that this cannot help but be great. but it wears its inevitable greatness with such perfect style)
5) Antidotes (because earlier tonight I nearly fell out of my own head. and because the bit halfway through is the best thing ever)
6) Paranoia Man In Cheap Sh*t Room (is vibrantly terrifying, is garishly earthy, is shiny black)
7) Bound Soul One (starts odd, starts confusing. everything is slightly wrong. then it gets wronger. then it gets beautiful)
8) Job Search (because there's nothing like signing off with a cracker)
9) Chicago Now (I just gave this another listen and yeah it really is that good. The Fall go spy-movie. someone gets hurt)
10) Middle Mass (the first 2/3 are The Fall's Welcome To The Inferno, the last 1/3 is 'just kidding, son')
11) Pat Trip Dispenser (yeah ok it's really good, not much more to add)
12) He Pep! (collision of everything that is great about The Fall)
13) Winter (a gorgeous take on an already super song)
14) Hexen Definitive - Strife Knot (horrifying in the best possible way)

Hmm, now I am thinking Pat Trip Dispenser should be at 14 and the last 3 moved up a place

yeah

Did you really wait almost 5 months to finish listening to it all?

yes I genuinely did! every time a track from later came up on shuffle I had to skip it. Tonight really is the first night I've heard the last 6 sessions

1) AUSTRALIANS IN EUROPE (like, duh. words cannot summarise the joy this song imparts unto me)
2) Hip Priest (was an EXTREMELY close battle for second but this is...unreal music)
3) New Puritan (in which a dude my age lays down the law. like, THE LAW. and the law is laid down. and it is the law.)
4) Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers (the original is so, so good that this cannot help but be great. but it wears its inevitable greatness with such perfect style)
5) Antidotes (because earlier tonight I nearly fell out of my own head. and because the bit halfway through is the best thing ever)
6) Paranoia Man In Cheap Sh*t Room (is vibrantly terrifying, is garishly earthy, is shiny black)
7) Bound Soul One (starts odd, starts confusing. everything is slightly wrong. then it gets wronger. then it gets beautiful)
8) Job Search (because there's nothing like signing off with a cracker)
9) Chicago Now (I just gave this another listen and yeah it really is that good. The Fall go spy-movie. someone gets hurt)
10) Middle Mass (the first 2/3 are The Fall's Welcome To The Inferno, the last 1/3 is 'just kidding, son')
11) He Pep! (collision of everything that is great about The Fall)
12) Winter (a gorgeous take on an already super song)
13) Hexen Definitive - Strife Knot (horrifying in the best possible way)

^^^makes a lovely, lovely CD-R-length playlist

hang on lemme re-order this out of qualitative and into playlistable order

actually that order kinda works tbh

playlist order:

1) Middle Mass
2) New Puritan
3) Paranoia Man In Cheap Sh*t Room
4) Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers
5) Hip Priest
6) Antidotes
7) Job Search
8) He Pep!
9) Chicago Now
10) Winter
11) Bound Soul One
12) Hexen Definitive - Strife Knot
13) Australians In Europe

Ok, now you must bundle up all your reviews and post it on The Fall forum for effusive praise!

God that forum's a bit intimidatingly huge/obsessive! Maybe tomorrow I'll just turn up and splurge them all.