The Fall’s new album can be seen as part of the arsenal of noteworthy albums that Mark E. Smith and his youth team (in different incarnations) and spouse have produced since Country On The Click - or the The Real New Fall LP as it was finally called. Within the upwards post-1990s trajectory Ersatz GB rates up with Fall Heads Roll, Reformation Post-TLC and Your Future Our Clutter, but to make any hierarchy of these albums would be pointless: The Fall are now a well-oiled organisation with Smith being anchored in by the musically intelligent Poulou (wife), and hopefully this means no more Levitates. Ersatz GB has elements of each of these recent albums. The keyboards are often redolent of tracks like ‘Green Eyed Loco Man’ as they take a kraut-ish density of noise and are probably severely multi-tracked. Also the heavier, effect-laden American alternative guitars that took precedence with Tim Presley and Rob Barbato from Darker My Love’s interjection on Reformation have remained, rather than the more staid, thin indie guitars of predecessors or any sustained attempt at neo-garage rockabilly. (It does remain a reference point hovever; ‘Mash Search’ has a particularly Gories-like riff).
As you would expect Smith’s lyrics dominate the mix. With Smith in his forefront role it has a somewhat obvious ramification for long-time listeners, his brilliant language is impossible to miss. Undeniably his way with evocative imagery is still intact, if a lot of his general sense has weaned over the years. He comes out with terms like "Bonjela complexion" on album highlight ‘Taking Off’, that uses the viscous and translucent goo of choice for the ulcer-stricken to describe someone’s shapeless and limpid features - it is part of a lexicon as repulsive as William S. Burroughs’ and brilliantly nasty. This is not to say that Mark E. Smith’s physical powers are not declining more rapidly. On a few tracks he sounds like one of the long-time heroin users outside Piccadilly Station. Particularly during the lowest point of the album, heavy-metal aping ‘Greenway’, Smith sounds like he has been gargling battery acid between cowboy killers. Smith must still be enamoured with Damo Suzuki, who has affected a similar sort of comedy-demonic vocal tone from time to time. To ‘Greenway’s’ rescue Smith gripes away with an assortment of loosely intelligible phrases such as "it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for Richard" and "I have to wake up the cat to beat the fucking dog". Even when The Fall are having an off-song, Smith’s ale-soaked curmudgeon dickhead routine is funny and so arresting that such an aberrant song has can be justified – included to mess with your expectations or just to be a pain.
There are some unusual quirks to this album, a song sung by Poulou - who sounds like a less sturm und drang Nico - which has cleverly sampled Smith’s grunts into slightly shorter, more sonorous and repetitive grunts. Yet, what makes this album perfect for Fall fans is that throughout there is a potent amalgam of current Fall and previous Fall backing band’s musical motifs. ‘Monocard’ is a particularly agreeable song with elements of classic (or should that be ‘The Classical’) era Fall beefed up with heavier, almost-Sabbath guitars that recalls Sonic Youth in both its guitar-grinding and extended experimental sections. The lyrics are pretty unintelligible, if brilliantly realised - some sound a little pre-linguistic, and it seems to be vaguely about a Prussian Dictator in Chiswick who is not acting so benevolently towards a princess and a gorilla: ‘at my peril and at my demand!’ It is standard Mark E. Smith unusualness (if that is not a double negative). He makes a great phantasmagorical monster, a role he has honed since apparently traumatising his younger sister during childhood. The album ends with ‘Age of Chang’ which in its title shows a less than contemporary – outside of John Terry’s meathead – attitude towards race and engendered a fear that it would be a small-minded rant about China rising, however, despite sounding like it was recorded in a tin, it manages to mock modern Western political rhetoric whilst being a call and response like ‘Boxoctosis’. Worryingly, Smith takes on his role as soothsayer for Northern emergencies: readers in Hawksmoor, Cumbria take heed... his final act in the album was to predict a dam bursting upon your vicinity. I am no expert when it comes to reservoirs, of the hydroelectric or direct water supply variety, but being a resident of Manchester following ‘Powder Keg’ and during the gentrification of football, I would invest in sandbags.