Wise Old Man. Really?

I am beginning to wonder if my critical faculties are gone, At the weekend a new Fall 7 track twelve inch arrived on the doorstep and with much anticipation it was hurriedly fired onto the turntable and the emotion turned from slight disappointment from about 30 seconds into Wise Old Man, all very shouty and nagging to complete bewilderment after about four minutes of the second track, All Leave Cancelled had passed. To me this is not music, just noise overlain by unintelligible growling. Still there was the remix of Dedication to look forward to, one of the highlights of the recent album,  which was not bad (not much different) until the final couple of minutes of pointless noise and more indecipherable nonsense from Smith. It didn't get much better on the flip, a further lo-fi version of the title track, listed as instrumental but containing as much vocal as on the a-side, next up another version of a track from Sublingual Tablet, followed by another,  neither of which add anything. Then it gets even worse, an audience sourced bootleg of No Xmas For John Quays and a bit of  nothing in particular given a title and tagged on at the end. So to quote that man out of time Jacob Rees Mogg "this really is thin gruel" for the cover price of £12.99, two new tunes one of which is ok the other, 8 minutes of pish, three are remixes of tunes from the last album and one is a not great live version of a song over thirty years old.

The reason why I feel that either I am losing my critical faculties or have received a different record from everyone else is due to the gushing praise that the record has received on the Fall forum, the 8 minutes of pish has been described as "the best thing the Fall have done in years". Other comments include "a gritty well balanced offering"  and "strangely beautiful". We have definitely not been listening to the same record.

Here is the title track from the Remainderer, the 10" single  which moped up odds and sods from the Re-mit sessions which in comparison was surprisingly good.

The Fall - The Remainderer

Here is rather pointless interview with Smith for Channel 4 news. Still, he looks well.