Post Script stands as the officially sanctioned final studio album by The Fall and arrives eight years after band leader Mark E. Smith died. It is a strange, funny, occasionally thrilling object: nine tracks built around archival Smith vocals recorded between 2001 and 2014, with the music subsequently constructed and completed by longtime Fall associates Ed Blaney and Simon “Ding” Archer.
That description should be enough to make a Fall fan reach for the nearest chair and sit down carefully.
Because this is not the lost Fall album that some early announcements made it sound like. It is not the final lineup finishing an album Smith had been working on in the months before his death. The recordings span more than a decade. Blaney and Archer have taken the surviving vocals, built music around them and assembled the nine songs into what is now being presented as the final official Fall record.
And yet, irritatingly, gloriously, Post Script often sounds enough like The Fall to make the argument rather less comfortable than it ought to be.
The opening track, “30 Degrees,” is the obvious place to start. It has the familiar machinery: a stubborn rhythm, a guitar line that sounds as though it has been left outside in Manchester weather, and Smith mumbling, barking and drifting through the arrangement like a man explaining a conspiracy to a vending machine. It was co-written by Smith, Archer and Blaney, and it gives the album its most immediate connection to the old Fall method.
“So Long” is a highlight, carrying the peculiar Fall talent for making something catchy while appearing to resent the very idea of melody. The rhythm keeps nudging forward; Smith sounds simultaneously bored and alert, which was one of his great tricks. Meanwhile “Colonels Retreat” and “Caveat” deepen the record’s peculiar atmosphere. These are less obviously designed to convince you that The Fall have returned from the dead and more interested in the thing The Fall always did best: making a piece of music feel as though it has wandered into the room without permission.
Then comes “Final Position,” which has the sort of title that would have been too on-the-nose for anybody except Mark E. Smith. It is difficult to listen to it without the circumstances hanging over the music. Smith is dead. The band is finished. And here he is again, sounding as though he has just arrived late for an appointment he never agreed to attend.
During Smith’s lifetime, Blaney and Archer were among the musicians and associates who had worked with him over the years. Archer, in particular, recorded many of Smith’s vocal takes during a period stretching from 2001 to 2014. According to accounts from those involved, some of the material existed as vocals and musical sketches that had never reached a finished release. After Smith’s death in January 2018, Blaney and Archer returned to that material and constructed new backing tracks around it.
The Fall was never simply Mark E. Smith singing over interchangeable musicians. Smith changed personnel constantly, sometimes seemingly for sport, but the chemistry between him and whoever happened to be holding the instruments was part of the band’s peculiar creative engine. The best Fall records sounded like arguments that had accidentally become rhythm sections.
“Retro Song” is perhaps the album’s funniest idea simply by existing. The Fall spent decades being accused of repeating themselves, while Smith spent decades demonstrating that repetition was precisely the point. The title sounds almost like a joke about the entire enterprise: here comes the future, again, wearing yesterday’s coat.
“Irish Northern Man,” “Dehydrated” and “The Book” complete the set, and the latter is particularly effective as a closing gesture. The album does not attempt some grand orchestral farewell. There is no tasteful cinematic funeral. This is The Fall. The corpse gets one more sarcastic remark and then somebody turns the amplifier off.
Post Script therefore presents a philosophical problem disguised as a nine-track album and begs the question how much Fall do you need before something becomes The Fall?
The answer, historically, was apparently: Mark E. Smith plus whoever survived the rehearsal. What Smith kept. What he discarded. Where he put the vocal. How he edited it. Which backing track he hated.
With Post Script, the man who would normally make those final decisions isn’t there.
And still the voice remains.
Donnie’s Rating: 7/10
