31 Days of Mark E. Smith-mas, Day 8: THIS NATION’S SAVING GRACE. If this is your favorite Fall album, I get it. I slightly prefer HEX but it’s just splitting hairs. More fun than most of their records, with a tad more swagger. Brix really came into her own on this one.

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31 Days of Mark E. Smith-mas, Day 7: THE WONDERFUL AND FRIGHTENING WORLD OF THE FALL. MES goes pop! Kinda. Brix’s first full record, the end of the two drummers era, and the cleanest production of any Fall record to date. The cassette version (with C.R.E.E.P.) is best.

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31 Days of Mark E. Smith-mas, Day 6: PERVERTED BY LANGUAGE. It’s like William S. Burroughs was fronting Tago Mago-era Can (complimentary). You can almost whistle one or two of these songs. Would’ve loved to have been at The Hacienda when they recorded Tempo House.

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31 Days of Mark E. Smith-mas, Day 5: ROOM TO LIVE. Most Fall albums sound slapdash at first blush which belies an incredible thoughtfulness in both music and lyrics. This just keeps sounding slapdash, 40+ years later. The first Fall album that I don’t truly love.

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31 Days of Mark E. Smith-mas, Day 4: HEX ENDUCTION HOUR. My favorite Fall album, and favorite album of the 1980s. A monumental, un-fuck-withable album of humor, vitriol, phantasmagoria, and sonic adventure. The addition of a second drummer was a masterstroke.

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And today’s GROTESQUE, which would be an all-timer if concurrent singles “How I Wrote Elastic Man” and “Totally Wired” were included. As it is, it’s an album that I don’t return to very often. But it’s their first record that doesn’t sound like it was recorded with tin cans.
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Then yesterday was DRAGNET, which might crack my personal Top 3 Fall albums? More mature than its predecesor, darker, more inventive, and just fuckin rocks. “They say music should be fun /
Like reading a story of love /
But I want to read a horror story.” Me too, Mark.

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Kicking it off was LIVE AT THE WITCH TRIALS, which is as fully-formed a mission statement as any band could ever have for a debut album. Literate, irreverent, at times inscrutable, cool as hell. Took me way too long to realize that “No Christmas for John Quays” is a pun.

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I’m Cramer and I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about Joe-Max Moore.