Many Fall fans prize the band’s early material, while others find every last puzzle piece essential. The band’s violin-augmented late ’80s and early ’90s sometimes feels relatively forgotten, but look like nirvana compared to the sporadically interesting but often gruelling morass of releases that began in the mid-’90s and hasn’t abated yet. The Fontana Years repackages the reissues of Extricate, Shift-Work and Code: Selfish from a decade ago (which featured contemporaneous EPs, BBC sessions, etc).
…Extricate includes the much-loved ‘Bill Is Dead’, and furthers the band’s catalogue of top-hole garage covers with The Monks’ ‘Black Monk Theme’, but the Coldcut-produced ‘Telephone Thing’ is musically dated (if still amusing). Shift-Work has always seemed like one…
…of the band’s most consistent albums, with Robert Gordon (Warp) among the producers, and with Smith happy being an Edinburgh Man but still lashing out on Idiot Joy Showland and The War Against Intelligence.
The Dredger EP is particularly strong, with its cover of The Big Bopper’s hillbilly moonshine anthem White Lightning. Code: Selfish reverts to a harder-edged route, and also holds up well, as do covers of The Legend Of Xanadu and Lee Perry’s bizarre Kimble.
1990: Extricate
CD1
1. Sing! Harpy
2. I’m Frank
3. Bill Is Dead
4. Black Monk Theme Part 1
5. Popcorn Double Feature
6. Telephone Thing
7. Hilary
8. Chicago, Now!
9. The Littlest Rebel
10. And Therein …
CD2
1. Telephone Thing (Extended Mix)
2. Telephone Dub
3. British People In Hot Weather
4. Butterflies 4 Brains
5. Arms Control Poseur (Single Version)
6. Arms Control Poseur (Original CD Bonus Track)
7. Zandra
8. Black Monk Theme Part 2
9. Extricate
10. Theme From Error Orrori
11. Chicago, Now! (BBC John Peel Session)
12. Black Monk Theme (BBC John Peel Session)
13. Hilary (BBC John Peel Session)
14. Whizz Bang (BBC John Peel Session)
1991: Shift-Work
CD1
1. So What About It?
2. Idiot Joy Showland
3. Edinburgh Man
4. Pittsville Direkt
5. The Book of Lies
6. The War Against Intelligence
7. Shift-Work
8. You Haven’t Found It Yet
9. The Mixer
10. A Lot of Wind
11. Rose
12. Sinister Waltz
CD2
1. White Lightning
2. Blood Outta Stone
3. Zagreb (Movements 1, 2, 3)
4. Life Just Bounces
5. The Funeral Mix
6. High Tension Line
7. Xmas With Simon
8. Don’t Take The Pizza
9. So What About It? (Remix 1)
10. So What About It? (Remix 2)
11. So What About It? (Remix 3)
12. The Re-Mixer
13. Cloud Of Black
14. Arid Al’s Dream
15. The War Against Intelligence (BBC John Peel Session)
16. Idiot Joy Showland (BBC John Peel Session)
17. A Lot Of Wind (BBC John Peel Session)
18. The Mixer (BBC John Peel Session)
1992: Code Selfish
CD1
1. The Birmingham School Of Business School
2. Free Range
3. Return
4. Time Enough At Last
5. Everything Hurtz
6. Immortality
7. Two-Face!
8. Just Waiting
9. So-Called Dangerous
10. Gentlemen’s Agreement
11. Married, 2 Kids
12. Crew Filth
CD2
1. Free Range (Single Version)
2. Return (Single Version)
3. Dangerous
4. Everything Hurtz (Single Version)
5. Ed’s Babe
6. Pumpkin Head Xscapes
7. The Knight The Devil And Death
8. Free Ranger
9. Noel’s Chemical Effluence
10. Legend Of Xanadu
11. Free Range (BBC John Peel Session)
12. Kimble (BBC John Peel Session)
13. Immortality (BBC John Peel Session)
14. Return (BBC John Peel Session)