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This Nation's Saving Grace is the eighth studio album by English post-punk band the Fall, released in 1985 by Beggars Banquet. The lyrics and singing melodies were written by vocalist Mark E. Smith, with a portion of the music composed by his newly wed wife American Brix Smith, who joined the band just before their previous album The Wonderful and Frightening World Of... (1984).

This Nation's Saving Grace
Studio album by The Fall
Released	23 September 1985 (1985-09-23)[1]
Recorded	June–July 1985[2]
Studio	The Music Works, London Chapel Lane, Hereford[2]
Genre	Post-punk
Length	47:17
Label	Beggars Banquet
Producer	John Leckie
The Fall chronology
The Wonderful and Frightening World Of... (1984) This Nation's Saving Grace (1985) Bend Sinister (1986)

The album emphasises Brix's pop sensibilities and guitar hooks, emphasised by Leckie's accessible production, and stands in contrast with the band's earlier recording.[3] TNSG was produced by John Leckie and promoted by the singles "Couldn't Get Ahead" and "Cruiser's Creek" and tours of Europe and America.

It is widely considered one of the Fall's best albums, both by critics and by Brix and bassist Steve Hanley. According to The Guardian, it shows the band "operating just on the edge of the mainstream and at the peak of their accessibility and yet strangeness".[4] In 2002, Pitchfork ranked it as the 13th best album of the 1980s.

Background, line-up and recording

Paul Hanley left the Fall in November 1984, leaving Karl Burns as the sole drummer and ending the band's classic dual drummer lineup. His brother, longtime Fall bassist Steve Hanley, took four months of paternity leave in late 1984.[5] He was replaced by Simon Rogers, a classically trained musician whom frontman Mark E. Smith knew from an earlier collaboration with the dancer-choreographer Michael Clarke.[6]

After Steve Hanley's return, Rogers remained in the band and switched to guitar and keyboards.[7][n 1]

Music and lyrics

John Leckie produced the band's 1984 album The Wonderful and Frightening World Of... and had built a strong working relationship with Smith. His approach to the project was to both retain the Fall's rough edges and solid rhythm section, while emphasising Brix's more pop orientated guitar parts. Leckie's production created a heavier wall of sound than their earlier releases and Smith praised his ability to bring forward the drum and bass parts. Smith later said that what he and Leckie were trying to achieve was a "well produced bedroom sound".[8]

On earlier albums Steve Hanley was often the group's main riff writer, but had been absent during the lead up to the album. Thus Brix and rhythm guitarist Craig Scanlon wrote most of the foundation riffs for the songs. Hanley later said that on earlier recordings the whole group had contributed music, but for This Nation's most of the work was done by Brix and Scanlon, in a 60/40 ratio by his estimation. As Brix had begun her career as a bass player, most of her musical ideas were simple one-string riffs played on lead guitar but closely resembling bass lines. Although in awe of his playing when she had joined the band in 1983; on his return she told Hanley "I'll show you the bass line on my guitar and you Steve Hanley it up."[9]

Smith's lyrics are typically caustic throughout; the music critic John Mulvey wrote that at times the "vile is positively phantasmagoric".[3]

Side one

The album opens with "Mansion", one of the Fall's few instrumentals, which the band often used as live set opener.[10] It is built around a muscular bassline by Steve Hanley.[11] The second track "Bombast" is again dominated by Hanley's bass. Smith's vocals promise to "bring wrath" to "bastard idiots" (including Lloyd Cole, whom Smith described as having a "brain and face...made out of cowpat. We all know that)",[12] and are at times sung through a megaphone.[4][11]

The title of "What You Need" and its line "slippery shoes for your horrible feet" are taken from an episode of The Twilight Zone.[11] Another lyric, "a bit of Iggy Stooge," refers to Iggy Pop of the Stooges who was a significant influence on the band. The song is formed around a circular guitar riff by Craig Scanlon.

"Spoilt Victorian Child" incorporates unused lyrics intended for the Fall's 1979 debut album Live at the Witch Trials, but had been held back until the band found a suitable musical hook. Smith described the words as utilising "really daft English".[11]

Side one ends with "L.A.", Brix's spectral ode to her hometown, written while the couple spent an extended stay in the city. He had a poor impression of the city, and later said that he "Hated it...Horrible town. If you like a beer, you are regarded as a tramp."[10] The track was described in 2011 as an "electro-goth groove" by critic Martin Aston.[7] It contains prominent keyboards by Simon Rogers. While the lead vocals are sung by Brix, Smith added backings which he said reflect his impression of the city as "more haunted than any old place".[8] Dave Haslam ranked it as "the sexiest song of 1985" in City Life, an assessment Smith disagreed with yet claimed to understand; he credited its sex appeal to Brix's contribution and noted how the song was popular among women—"Except," he clarified, "that the Fall are probably the most unpopular group among women ever. We've never had a good review from a woman journalist in the whole world."[13]

Side two

"My New House" details the Smith's purchase of a semi-detached in Sedgley Park, Prestwich, close to childhood home, where his parents still lived. A number of visitors remarked how unusual the house was, in particular the blue/grey colour scheme used in all the rooms.[10] The lyrics are humorous and sardonic,[8] and include lines such as "no rabbit house about it, I bought it off the Baptists, I get the bills, and I get miffed".[14] For the Daily News' David Hinkley, the song is "near-hypnotic".[15]

The album's widely considered highpoint, "Paint Work" is a semi-acoustic tape collage dominated Smith's stream of consciousness lyrics, Karl Burns' cymbal crashes and Craig Scanlon's meandering lead guitar line.[16] Credited to Smith, Scanlon and Rogers, it blends studio recordings with sections recorded on a four track in Roger's flat and audio from Smith's dictaphone. During the mixing, Smith took the master tape home and accidentally erased part of the track with a section from a documentary he was listening to from an Open University lecture by the astronomer Patrick Moore on "red giants stars".[8] The sudden jump between Low fidelity home taped and studio recordings fitted the mood of the track, and he and Leckie decided to include on the finished version.[4] The track was described in 2019 as "absolutely sublime" by Vulture,[3][17] and as "mildly psychedelic" in 2011 by critic Mick Middles.

The drum heavy "I Am Damo Suzuki" is a tribute to the Japanese ex-pat vocalist Damo Suzuki of the Krautrock group Can,[18] who Smith described as an early and major influence.[8][19] The lyrics describe and evoke Suzuki's stage presence and singing style and are accompanied by Brix's descending chords and drummer Karl Burns metronomic drums. The music is heavily influenced by the 1971 Can song "Oh Yeah", but also contains elements (especially the descending chords, which are similar to their earlier track "Elves" (also written by Brix) and based on the Stooges "I Wanna Be Your Dog") of other Can tracks such as "Bel Air" (1973), "Gomorrah" (1974) and "Midnight Men" (1977). The song was described in 2022 as a "hypnotic art-rock anthem befitting of [Can's] name",[20] while in 2019 Suzuki biographer Paul Woods wrote that "MES took the 'Oh Yeah' riff and overrode it with a speed-freak surrealist tribute to Can and Damo himself while throwing in an oblique reference to Fritz Leiber, one of a number of supernatural horror authors who also obsessed him."[21]

The word "Yarbles" in the title of the bitterly nostalgic song "To NK Roachment: Yarbles"[7] is borrowed from the novel A Clockwork Orange as Nadsat for testicles or bollocks. The song's lyrics "Every day you have to die some/Every day you have to cry some" is an allusion to the Arthur Alexander song "Every Day I Have To Cry Some" or possibly to similar lines in the Lou Reed 1983 song "Home of the Brave".

1988 bonus tracks

Two bonus tracks were included on the 1988, 1990 and 1997 CD releases. The music for the album's second single "Cruiser's Creek" is built around another circular and twangy guitar riff by Brix, while the lyrics detail a debauched office-party.[8] Writing for The Guardian in 2014, critic Dave Simpson described the song as "leftfield and outsiderly, yet the insistent tune is surely as catchy as anything by the Beatles."[22] For Hinkley, the song is reminiscent of Dire Straits.[15] The single was released on 11 October, 1985,[23] and was accompanied by a music video directed by both Mark and Cerith Wyn Evans,[24] and stars Leigh Bowery in a role Smith described as resembling "a clerk on acid, like he was from some alternative world".[25] The second bonus was a cover of Gene Vincent's rockabilly song "Rollin' Dany"; critic Tim Riley, the Fall's interest Vincent w "to explore [its] obsessive undercurrents of unrequited desire than to honor rock tradition".[26]

A second bonus track "Couldn't Get Ahead" was recorded before Steve Hanley rejoined, and has Rogers playing bass.[27]

Release

This Nation's Saving Grace was released on 23 September 1985 by Beggars Banquet Records.[1] The label took out full page adverts in the UK Music press, showing the album's bleak city-scape of Manchester's center designed by Claus Castenskiold.[11] It reached number 54 on the UK Albums Chart.[28]

After tours of the north of England and the US, the Fall recorded the double A-sided single "Couldn't Get Ahead"/"Rollin' Dany" and subsequent single "Cruiser's Creek" with Rogers standing in on bass guitar.[29]

Reception

Professional ratings

Contemporaneous reviews (1985–86)
Review scores
Source	Rating
Calgary Herald	A[30]
Daily News	[15]
Music Week	[31]
The Sault Star	[32]
Sounds	[33]
Times Colonist	[34]
The Village Voice	B+[35]

This Nation's Saving Grace highly praised by the UK music press on release. The NME's David Quantick wrote the Fall had managed to create "one of their most accessible LPs yet" which he described as "infinitely more peculiar than almost anything else released this year."[36] In contrast to the prevailing view of the Fall's development after recruiting Brix, Music Week suggested the album offered more of the same but lacked potential for mainstream crossover.[31]

American critics generally praised Brix's direction and songwriting. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice noted how the "Yank guitarist...righted husband Mark E.'s feckless avant-gardishness" and said that the record was "cunningly sloppy, minimally catchy Hawkwind/Stooges with each three-chord drone long enough to make an avant-gardish statement but stopping short of actual boredom."[35] In a 1986 article on the band in Creem, Renaldo Migaldi said "The Fall have been around since 1977, but only in the last couple of years have they achieved their fullest creative flowering" on This Nation's Saving Grace and their preceding album, noting that her contributions had been "integral to how the band sounds now. Namely, better."[37] Conversely, a blurb on the album in Cashbox was dismissive: "This is post wave rock 'n' roll for the depressed teenager."[38]

NME placed the album as that year's sixth best.[39] Listeners of John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show voted six songs from This Nation's Saving Grace to the annual Festive Fifty list: "Cruiser's Creek" (no. 3), "Spoilt Victorian Child" (no. 23), "Gut of the Quantifier" (no. 33), "Couldn't Get Ahead" (no. 39), "L.A." (no. 42), and "Rollin' Dany" (no. 55).[40] Jim Sullivan of The Boston Globe and Kristine McKenna of the Los Angeles Times also ranked the album in their top ten best albums of the year.[41][42]

Retrospective evaluation

Professional ratings

Retrospective reviews
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[43]
The Guardian	[4]
Mojo	[44]
Pitchfork	10/10[45]
Q	[46]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	(1992)[47]  (2001)[48]
Spin Alternative Record Guide	10/10[49]
Uncut	9/10[50]

Bruce Tiffee of Pitchfork described the album as "one of the strongest" Fall releases and "perhaps the best record to emerge from the Beggars Banquet Fall era".[45] In 2011 Dave Simpson of The Guardian wrote that the album showcased the Fall "thrillingly subverting the notion of what pop music is",[4] while John Mulvey of Uncut wrote that it contained the band's strongest configuration "in all their menacing and utilitarian finery".[12]

In 2002, This Nation's... was listed by Pitchfork as the 13th best album of the 1980s.[51] It was ranked at number 46 on Spin's list of the 100 greatest albums from 1985 to 2005.[52] Slant Magazine placed the record at number 93 on its 2012 list of the best albums of the 1980s.[53]

NME placed the album as number 400 on their 2013 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.[54] The record was ranked number 441 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000), a list based on a poll of more than 200,000 people.[55] Per Larkin's Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Brix's "partly melodious sheen ... brought an air of 60s subculture to the group's post-industrial rattle", without compromising the band's "stubbornly maverick" roots, as the album "shows the Fall extending stylistic barriers without sacrificing their individuality."[56]

Legacy

James Murphy—best known as the frontman of New York dance-punk band LCD Soundsystem—purchased This Nation's Saving Grace the year of its release and said its aesthetic initially "terrified" him.[57] He later cited it as a formative influence on his artistic outlook:

I was completely blown away. At the time, all I could hear on the radio was synth pop and then here comes this band that sound broken and wrong. I'd never heard anything like it—the idea of someone taking the time to go into a studio and record a singer [who] may or may not be in tune. It opened a lot of abstract paths to me because before that I was looking at abstract art and saying, 'This is garbage! What's the point?' But I started to get into abstract art because of the Fall ... I started to realise that people's aesthetic goals were not necessarily to achieve perfection.[58]

Murphy said the album inspired him to take greater risks in his music and, more specifically, noted its impact on the lo-fi intro to "Yr City's a Sucker" from LCD Soundsystem's 2005 self-titled debut album, akin to the tape experimentation of "Paint Work".[59] On the band's 2017 album American Dream, the song "Other Voices" alludes to "L.A." with the line, "This is what's happening and it's freaking you out".[60]

Reissue

An extended version of the album was issue in 2011 on Beggars Banquet Records reissue imprint Beggars Archive. The 42-track box-set was accompanied by a 48-page colour booklet and two discs of rough studio mixes and Peel sessions.[10][61]

Track listings

Original UK LP

Cassette and CD

2011 Omnibus Edition

Disc 1 – This Nation's Saving Grace

• As per original UK LP

Personnel

The Fall[2]

• Mark E. Smith – vocals, violin on "I Am Damo Suzuki", guitar; harmonica on "Couldn't Get Ahead"
• Brix Smith – guitar, vocals
• Steve Hanley – bass guitar, backing vocals
• Craig Scanlon – guitar, backing vocals
• Karl Burns – drums, backing vocals
• Simon Rogers – keyboards, guitar, bass guitar, drum machine, backing vocals

Technical

• John Leckie – production, engineering
• Joe Gillingham – engineering
• Michael Pollard – cover
• Claus Castenskiold – cover[11]

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

External links

• This Nation's Saving Grace at TheFall.org
• This Nation's Saving Grace at Discogs (list of releases)
• Lyrics at The Annotated Fall

На других языках

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- [en] This Nation's Saving Grace

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[ru] This Nation’s Saving Grace

This Nation’s Saving Grace — девятый студийный альбом британской рок-группы The Fall, записанный с продюсером Джоном Лекки и вышедший 23 сентября 1985 года на лейбле Beggars Banquet Records[2]. В UK Singles Chart альбом поднялся до #54[3].

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