“When do I quit?” Mark E. Smith ponders on Your Future Our Clutter, The Fall’s 28th studio album, on one of several songs narrated from a hospital. Machines whirl around him as doctors mutter ominously, no doubt discussing Smith’s condition. Smith has been rambling on like an angry old man for 30 years, but for the first time, he actually feels like one. He wants to leave, but he’s confined to a bed, stuck watching “Murder She Wrote.” To make matters worse, somebody calls him “Sir.” “Nobody has ever called me Sir in my entire life,” he mutters.
And maybe that’s why Your Future Our Clutter sounds so damn vital: Smith has something to prove this time around. He’s not Sir, and he doesn’t want to quit anytime soon, so on one of The Fall’s best records in a decadeone that easily holds up against the band’s 2003 comeback The Real New Fall LPSmith proves himself as full of life as the young ringers with which he surrounds himself. The Fall’s lineup turns over more than the cast of most reality television shows, but this one is especially commanding, turning out terse, rollicking riffs and propulsive, fuzzed-out bass lines, with a few bold surprises (yes, that’s a Daft Punk sample on “Cowboy George.”)
Here’s hoping Smith's twilight years yield more records as ferocious, purposeful and unexpectedly poignant as this one.
