Back catalogue: Indie/Alternative

Review: Last year, former Fall guitarist (and now celebrated radio broadcaster) Marc Riley stumbled on a rare bootleg recording of a concert the band had given to a sparsely populated audience at St Helens Technical College in the spring of 1981. To celebrate the gig's 40th anniversary, the recording has now been re-mastered and pressed to wax. It's a brilliant document of the Fall at their post-punk era best, with legendary front man Mark E Smith talking, singing, yelping and shouting has way through a series of raw, post-punk era workouts built around raucous, fuzz-toned guitars, low-slung basslines and loose-limbed drumming. For fans of Smith and his long-running band, it should be an essential purchase.

Review: The Fall's tenth album, like pretty much all the others, was met with a mixed critical response, but as well as containing one of the band's only two Top 40 UK singles - their cover of 'Victoria' by The Kinks, executed with a sideways swipe at the Victorian values of the Thatcher-led Tory government of the time - it's also got a stack of tracks that have grown to be Fall fan favourites. 'Carry Bag Man', autobiographical in a pretty loose sense, is compulsive and hilarious. The tight and taut glam stomp meet Krautrock drive of 'Bremen Nacht', complete with scraping violins and honking saxes, is about as good as the band gets in this particularly purple patch of their lengthy career. 'Athlete Cured' , as well as containing the priceless line "an odour resembling hot dogs / permeated his whole room", is all rockabilly aggression re-routed through synth drums and Moog washes, is essential Fall too.
As if that weren't enough, this re-issue package comes with a whole host of additional delights, including their biggest hit 'Ghost In My House', the electro hybrid anthem 'Hit The North', four radio session tracks, and their cover of The Beatles' 'A Day In The Life', previously only available on an NME charity album. Far from being a Fall completist's dream - they will probably have everything on here anyway - this is actually a brilliant place to start discovering one of the most important and delight-inducing bands of the past half decade.

Review: Demon Records have embarked on a project to put out four new vinyl reissues from Mark E. Smith and his cult band The Fall.The Infotainment Scan album landed back in 1993 on Permanent Records and went on to be the outfit's highest charting work, entering the UK charts at a frankly unbelievable #9. That said, it is the most accessible of all their records with its cover of Sister Sledge's 'Lost in Music' as well as tunes like 'Paranoia Man in Cheap Sh*t Room' and 'Glam Racket'. This is the first time it has been on wax in almost three decades.