Album Review: Live: Uurop VIII-XII/Places in Sun & Winter, Son by The Fall

Like a patched-up mercenary U-Boat commanded by Ahab’s northern cousin. Like a rebel who rebels while wearing brown M&S socks, not while not wearing brown M&S socks. Like the nutter on the bus from Jasper Carrott’s ‘nutter on the bus’ routine, only now the nutter’s got a gang of younger, saner fellows with him and they seem to actually think he’s actually all right actually, nowadays, enough to stay sat on the bus with him for a sustained period of time, at least.

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Mark E. Smith doesn’t make things very easy. He has used his band the Fall as a device to challenge a great deal of what we all think or know about pop music. Their aesthetic was almost always dialed a few notches above punishing guitars, no matter who was playing them. Their lineup changes have ….

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One of the many perverse tendencies of the Fall’s Mark E. Smith is his fondness for the live album. Wikipedia counts 31 live records by the band, and that’s not including the handful of part-live/part-studio efforts that have appeared over the years. This album appears to fall into the latter category, although details are scant.

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The Fall’s complex output over the years has - alongside 30 studio albums - also consisted of live albums and compilations, many of questionable quality and issued unofficially without Smith’s consent. The typically verbose Uurop VIII-XII Places in Sun & Winter, Son, however, is a new live album collated and compiled entirely by Smith himself, implying a firm direction from the group’s ever-present leader. Smith’s infinite resilience and work ethic has become imperative to The Fall’s longevity, and their 12th live album documents the group’s most cohesive line-up to date.

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