The Fall's new album Imperial Wax Solvent is an excellent album. They certainly don't sound like a band that is on it's 45th album. A lot of their albums are hit and miss propositions and their best work is singles or on EPs.
The Fall has basically doing variations of the same agit-prop musical theme for thirty years, but the band's music remains vital because what they do is highly stylized and completely unique. I really love the Fall but a non-stop diet of Mark E. Smith's jaded free association lyrics can become mind numbing.
The Fall is important to the history Manchester music scene as the Joy Division, Stone Roses or Oasis, but is rarely acknowledge for their contributions to the Manchester sound.
I think most of their earliest work on Rough Trade Records is their most immediate and inspiring. I first encountered the Fall's music when a bought their 7" Totally Wired single in 1979 at the recommendation of Mike Dreese the owner a living room sized store that sold collectors comics and imported punk rock music in Boston. I was hooked there wasn't really another group doing what the Fall did, and there still isn't.
The best collection of the Fall's early music on Rough Trade is Totally Wired- the Rough Trade Anthology. The Rough Trade Anthology pulls together a lot of the earliest Fall singles, choice album cuts and some of their rarer EPs like Slates. There are some early Fall songs like Leave the Capitol, Prole Art Threat and Middle Mass that are forgotten gems and hard to find.
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