By J Howell
To trot out, once again, the nearing-cliche bit about The Fall said by the late John Peel, “they are always the same; they are always different.” Simple wisdom from Peel regarding the Fall, and always applicable: Ersatz G.B. is no different in that regard. Whether that’s a good thing or not is entirely up to the listener.
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2010 shaped up to be a pretty damned good year for music. In no particular order, my favorite (non-local, at least) records this year were:
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By J Howell
The late John Peel once famously said of The Fall that the reason he loved them was because “they are always different; they are always the same.” That pretty much sums up Your Future, Our Clutter as well as any one sentence could.
Though only Mark E. Smith has been constant throughout the band’s thirty-four year career, that same thread of similar traits is present on this, the band’s twenty-eighth album. Part of that may be that Your Future, Our Clutter was made by the same Fall that made the last album, Imperial Wax Solvent, but listening to a cross-section of Fall music made over the band’s career one can’t help but notice that there are similarities: hypnotic repetition in the music, distinctly British social commentary, Mark E. Smith’s iconoclastic vocals, and an amazing knack for being simultaneously incredibly abrasive and hooky.
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