The award for the weirdest thing I’ve seen on the internet this week is Amazon suggesting that those purchasing the 2-CD deluxe edition of Sticky Fingers by the Stones also consider bundling that purchase with Sub-Lingual Tablet, the 31st record by brilliant post-punk weirdos The Fall (both of which hit shelves this Tuesday). Okay, so I’m guessing that there are a few record store nerds who cherish The Stones’ most diverse, and widely-considered best, album and consider it to be just as essential of a must-have as The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall and Bend Sinister, but while the Sticky Fingers was clearly an obvious, albeit ingenious marketing scam to coincide with Daddy’s Day, I can count on one hand the number of breeders I know who would actively pursue The Fall’s latest album… and I’m pretty sure they all know Mark E. Smith personally…
Although The Fall can sometimes be easy to write off for their juvenilely obvious socio-political commentaries (much like Atari Teenage Riot) – Sub-Lingual Tablet’s best tracks are actually titled “ Dedication Not Medication,” “Auto Chip 2014-2016,” and “Quit iPhone” – like ATR, the commentaries are not only accurate, but the songs are fucking good. And like The Fall’s most recent releases, Sub-Lingual Tablet seems to be an sonic amalgam of the band’s four-decade history, which embodies both the hyper-subversive and the actually-pretty-near-to-popular. It touches on both proto-and-post-punk, ‘80s synths, ‘90s alternative, and post/art/post-art rock (and any other synonym for that particular brand of noise.) To generalize, the album as a whole sounds sorta like if Iggy Pop, Daniel Ash, and Peter Hook had achieved their fame as a band headlining the second stage of Lollapalooza in ’94 (The album actually contains a cover/”reworking” of Iggy and the Stooges’ “Cock in My Pocket,” titled “Stout Man,” which is pretty amazing.)
