Making an art form of harsh, chaotic and repetitive crazed riffs and storytelling. The Fall’s both helped create and borne longtime witness to the post-punk scene. Formed in 1976, the band’s gone through a dizzying number of lineup changes and has pumped out 29 albums. Frontman and lyricist Mark E. Smith is The Fall’s whacked-out engine and the meeting of his rage and noise with his group’s able instrumental fluency is some kind of epic clash.

Ersatz (Cherry Red Records), its name notwithstanding, is no substitute, just the band being its always-evolving self. “Nate Will Not Return” opens with a bass-drenched amplified electronic gurgle. Smith slurs and stumbles and vocally lurches like a drunken pirate sailor bumping his head against a ceiling of finely wrought music. “Greenway” stomps on the eardrums dementedly with tales of gentle anecdotes such as “I had to wank off the cat to feed the fucking dog.” Keyboardist and Smith’s wife Eleni Poulou on “Happi Song” lends some much-needed softness to this smasher of an album.

Mark E. Smith’s persona is as familiar as is strange and that is part of the magic. He is the archetype of the drunk, loud, belligerent if articulate mess of a man you’re bound to run into sooner or later at a bar, on the subway platform, and in some cases the living room. An atonal angry tone colors Ersatz, generous with rambling yet focused verbal bile and venom. Somehow, Smith’s style can become pleasant in a dark humorous way once it hits you just how unpleasant it’s intended to be. Songs on Ersatz are lengthy which in a way could be seen as fitting, Smith wouldn’t be able to pack quite as much calculated cacophony into a more truncated time frame.

3 / 5 bars

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The Fall – Taking Off by Kostas Loukidis