If, like me, your taste for rockabilly starts and ends with The Cramps, Suicide and Nicolas Cage in Wild at Heart, the new Fall album might scratch your itch. Still, while the grimy limey post-punk elder statesmen have included country-fried ditties and a cover of Wanda Jackson’s “Funnel of Love” (previously tackled by fellow outlaws the Meat Puppets and Southern Culture on the Skids), the influence is mostly subliminal, overshadowed as always by frontman Mark E. Smith’s Manchester jabber.
“Bury Pts. 1 + 3” out lo-fis them all with an opening minute-and-a-half sounding like a boom box in a garbage dumpster. “Cowboy George” and “Hot Cake” are the previously mentioned twang-rockers — interspersed with eerie sound effects, natch — while “Chino” is the most sinister these wankers have sounded in years. Yet “Weather Report 2” is the cruelest trick, starting off pop before slipping into four minutes of electronic sludge and Smith’s final snarl: “You don’t deserve rock ’n’ roll.…” Dig repetition?
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