...and Happy New Year. We interrupt our regularly-scheduled programming (namely the long-overdue account of my trip to Mexico, ::blush::) in order to bring you 15 musical reflexxions on the year that just passed.
Let’s face it: the last three Fall records were boring. I never liked the sorry excuse for a replacement band that Mark E. Smith assembled around him back in 2001—failed pub rockers and football hooligans who seemed to be in it for the wrong reasons and who complained about being in it the whole time they were doing it. Jim Watts struck me as whiny, Ed Blaney as dishonest, and Ben Pritchard as untalented. Thankfully, last minute addition Steve Trafford pulled out his best Steve Hanley impression and gave the band a fantastic, elastic bass-driven car commercial called “Blindness,” the closest thing to a legendary Fall track all decade by a band who used to turn out ten such masterpieces each year.
It’s no wonder that MES jumped at the chance to collaborate with German techno rebels Mouse on Mars. Though they’ve been releasing records nearly every other year since the early ‘90s, they’ve never really followed fashion, which is unique amongst electronic artists whose sounds depend on state-of-the-art production and equipment. More importantly, MoM have never quite sounded like they give a rats ass about rock, which makes their collaboration with the king of devolved, lo-fi rockabilly racket quite surprising.
The strength of Von Sudenfed’s album is that it sounds like neither of its parent bands, despite the fact that the Fall have tried a record in nearly every alternative style imaginable and Mouse on Mars have used vocalists before. Tromatic Reflexxions melds arrhythmic, bleepy music to MES’s space alien storytelling in such a way that the pairings seem almost arbitrary and incompatible, like two opposing musical forces crashing together in chaos and cacophony. Its success lies in the fact that neither element overcomes the other. The Fall have failed in the new millennium because MES hasn’t been able to find bandmates who are truly his peers; Von Sudenfed marks his first real artistic collaboration in a decade.
Thus, in honor of this album placing at #15 on my best of 2007 list, I am pleased to present the video for “Fledermaus Can’t Get It.” Admittedly, I have never been enthusiastic over drag queen routines and likely never will be, though here it is obvious that these men, whoever they might be, are in way over their heads. The beardy one with Sarah Michelle Gellar hair is fabulous, though he fares quite poorly (and hilariously) as the white-haired mop attempting to keep up with MES’s vocals.
G-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g. Enjoy.
2 comments:
Lets face it your just a failed journalist who thinks the internet is the new night out,sat in your own little world in your bedsit.
Get back into the 80s along with your haircut and wobbled views.
The thing is Mark e Smith always goes forward unlike all the other shite bands in your collection.
As for Steve Trafford.........
Well he is in a real band hahahah.
Pete and the peodophiles
Steve Trafford did NOT write Blindness. It was Spencer Birtwhistle inspired by an Ed Blaney mixtape which had Witness the Fitness by Roots Manuva on it. I remember at the time Steve Trafford was inspired by Jane Wiedlin's "Rush Hour" and attempted to rip off the "great chord progression". THANKFULLY this idea was rejected by the group. Whatever you may think nearly ALL Fall songs are inspired by pop hits, good pop hits only mind.
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