The Fall
Totally Wired: The Rough Trade Anthology
[Castle/Sanctuary; 2002]
Rating: 9.5
If you've managed to make it this far in life without discovering The Fall, put off whatever purchases
you were planning next and buy, instead, three records: This Nation's Saving Grace, Hex Enduction
Hour, and this newly released two-disc set, Totally Wired: The Rough Trade Anthology. The music
contained here is nothing short of absolutely essential, epochal rock and roll that sounds like nothing else,
including the racks upon racks of albums it eventually inspired.
Staggering out of industrial Manchester, England at the height of the post-punk era on a lo-fi bed of jagged,
intoxicated guitar work and swaggering rhythm, The Fall were like an alternate rock and roll reality, an
entire musical universe unto themselves. Vocalist and band mainstay Mark E Smith's scattershot, loquacious
delivery and Northern pride put him in a league of his own, where his sneering, often indecipherable vocals
ranged from shocking to hilarious to deeply political, and were never any less than absolutely thrilling.
The Fall's three-year tenure at Rough Trade Records is the stuff of legend, full of rancorous label/band
fighting (Smith later said he'd rather retire than record for them again), furious live shows, and music
that would forever alter the course of independent music. Some of The Fall's best songs are scattered
across the two discs of this set. The only other period during which the band were this consistent in
their 2½-decade-long (and counting) career was the one that immediately followed it, when the band signed
to Beggars Banquet and released some of their best work-- including 1984's The Wonderful and Frightening
World of The Fall and their 1985 classic This Nation's Saving Grace, both of which saw them
incorporating more distinct pop elements into their sharp-witted, staggering cut-and-thrust.
The set opens with the track it was named for, a 1980 single that later appeared on the US edition of
Grotesque (After the Gramme). The song is as indicative of The Fall's signature sound as any other,
but it's also perhaps one of their most accessible. First come the stomping drums, briefly recalling the
opening moments of The Ramones' "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio", though the similarity ends when
Smith grandly announces, "I'm totally wired," his voice stuttering and cracking, turning an otherwise
routinely declamatory line into a frantic yelp. The band members echo his chorus, but it's during the
verses that Smith drops the song's best lines: "You don't have to be weird... uh-to be... wiiiired... and
I'm always worried."
It's stunning to hear how consistent this band was in their heyday. Throughout their countless genre
explorations, they never failed, and always wound up, somehow, sounding like nothing other than The Fall.
"That Man" is old-fashioned 50s rock 'n' roll, as if the Cold War had really become the nuclear holocaust
it always threatened to. "The Man Whose Head Expanded" hints at schlocky New Romantic synth-pop with its
bleeping keyboard preset (the same one used by Trio for their Volkswagen-resurrected hit "Da Da Da"), but
Smith's rant pulls it back from the brink and the guitars send it lurching into a wandering breakdown and
frenzied build-up. The mighty "Rowche Rumble", one of the band's defining tracks, soon follows, with
Smith's sarcastic opening claim, "Well, this is a groovy number," preceding the nailbomb-like explosion of
Marc Riley's and Craig Scanlon's guitars into a jaw-dropping riff.
Elsewhere, "Pay Your Rates" barrels through production that makes Vampire on Titus sound like Kylie
Minogue, while "New Puritan" sounds as though it could have been recorded off a depression-era radio show
receiving the future of harrowing, abstract art-punk mayhem. And the sinister riffs of "Pay Your Rates"
and "Prole Art Threat" are designed for the sole purpose of detonation and destruction: raw pummeling with
little consideration for the rest of the band.
Though neither of these discs are arranged in chronological order, the second largely consists of later
material than the first, focusing primarily on 1983's Perverted by Language. The album marked the
debut of Smith's future wife Brix with the band, and a turn toward slightly more accessible (or at least
less grinding) music, and though none of it was ever going to threaten the top of the charts, the group
was opening up to a less improvisational stance that made for more direct hooks. In fact, this was the
era in which The Fall would do their best work yet, balancing dissonant crunch with more rigid structures.
This compilation is invaluable: it's the first time a truly exhaustive compilation of some of The Fall's
best material has been made available stateside, where the stuff has long been difficult to track down.
Compiling the work of a band like The Fall would be a maddening task, with literally dozens of releases in
multiple formats scattered across more than a half-dozen labels. Totally Wired provides an excellent
starting point for one of their best periods. Though it does stop short of the thoroughness that might make
it a true anthology, Totally Wired pulls from every Rough Trade release The Fall recorded, providing
a quality roadmap for where a listener might want to go next, and that's indispensable for a band so worth
exploring.
-Joe Tangari, October 10th, 2002