The Marshall Suite

The Marshall Suite
Studio album by The Fall
Released 12 October 1999
Recorded Battery Studios, London, 1998
Genre Post-punk
Length 39:27
Label Artful
Producer Mark E Smith, Steve Hitchcock
The Fall chronology
Levitate
(1997)		 The Marshall Suite
(1999)		 Live 1977
(2000)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
The Guardianfavourable[2]

The Marshall Suite is a 1999 album by The Fall (their 20th). The album builds on the techno-influenced beats of its predecessor Levitate (1997), while also returning to a more rockabilly-influenced sound reminiscent of earlier Fall line-ups. The end result has songs like the catchy "Touch Sensitive", and the strange, complex, thumping jungle beats of "Crying Marshall". The album was long out of print, but a new 3-disc edition was released in the summer of 2011.[3]

The Marshall Suite was made immediately after an American tour during which Mark E. Smith had an onstage fight with members of the band and was arrested following ongoing altercations at the hotel where the group were staying. While the remaining band members quit and returned to England, leaving Smith in a cell in Manhattan, Nagle chose to stay in the band, helping to assemble a new line-up of the group. This new line-up was still taking shape during the recording of the album; the group shed a drummer before recording could even begin, and the album features two different bassists. For these reasons, it is something of a patchwork: out of 13 tracks, "On My Own" is a reworking of the previous album's "Everybody But Myself", three tracks are covers, two are sound collages, and "The Crying Marshal" is a remix by producer Steven Hitchcock of a Smith collaboration with the Filthy Three ("Real Life of the Crying Marshal"). Two songs use some of the same lyrics (a 14th track, "Tom Raggazzi" - a reggae-tinged reprise of "Anecdotes..." - was included on the vinyl version). Nevertheless, the album was well received.

Around the time of its release, rumours circulated that The Marshall Suite was a concept album about "The Crying Marshall". Smith stopped short of denying this, telling The Wire that "I thought it would be good to do it as the story of his life, a themed LP, with a thread running through it. It's such an unhip thing to do". An unpublished section of the interview, later placed on the magazine's website, suggested Smith was not yet finished with his creation: "I do want to continue the Marshall theme, develop it. Maybe a five-sided thing next, the return of the Marshall".[4] However, he does not appear to have returned to the theme on any subsequent Fall album.

An edit of the album's opening track "Touch Sensitive" was used in the UK as a soundtrack to an advert for the Vauxhall Corsa.

Track listing

CD version

  1. "Touch Sensitive" (Julia Nagle, Mark E. Smith) – 3:16
  2. "F-'Oldin' Money" (Tommy Blake, W. S. Stephenson, Carl Belew) – 2:45
  3. "Shake-Off" (Nagle, Smith, Tom Head, Stephen Hitchcock, Karen Leatham) – 3:03
  4. "Bound" (Smith, Wilson Brothers) – 3:19
  5. "This Perfect Day" (Chris Bailey, Ed Kuepper) – 2:10
  6. "(Jung Nev's) Antidotes" (Hitchcock, Smith, Neville Wilding) – 3:27
  7. "Inevitable" (Head, Leatham, Nagle, Smith) – 3:51
  8. "Anecdotes+Antidotes in B#" (Nagle, Smith) – 2:59
  9. "Early Life of Crying Marshal" (Hitchcock, Smith, Jason Baron) – 0:50
  10. "The Crying Marshal" (Hitchcock, Smith, Baron, Martin Neary) – 4:39
  11. "Birthday Song" (Nagle, Smith) – 3:38
  12. "Mad. Men-Eng, Dog" (Nagle, Smith, Spencer Marsden) – 2:18
  13. "On My Own" (Nagle, Smith, Simon Wolstencroft) – 3:12

Vinyl version

Side A
  1. "Touch Sensitive"
  2. "F-'Oldin' Money"
  3. "Shake-Off"
  4. "Bound"
  5. "This Perfect Day"
Side B
  1. "(Jung Nev's) Antidotes"
  2. "Inevitable"
  3. "Anecdotes+Antidotes in B#"
  4. "Tom Raggazzi (Finale)" (Head, Nagle, Smith) – 2:21
Side C
  1. "Early Life of Crying Marshal"
  2. "The Crying Marshal"
  3. "Birthday Song"
  4. "Mad. Men-Eng, Dog"
  5. "On My Own"

2011 reissue (3CD)

Disc 1
1-13: as per original CD
14. "Tom Raggazzi (Finale)"
Disc 2
  1. "Touch Sensitive" (Dance Mix) – 7:13
  2. "Antidote" – 3:04
  3. "This Perfect Day" (New Version) – 2:21
  4. "Birthday Song" (New Mix) – 3:39
  5. "The REAL Life of the Crying Marshall" (New Version) – 4:05
  6. "Tom Raggazzi" (New Mix) – 4:05
  7. "Touch Sensitive" (Peel Session 21) – 3:39
  8. "Bound Soul One" (Peel Session 22) – 3:53
  9. "Antidotes" (Peel Session 22) – 5:00
  10. "Shake-Off" (Peel Session 22) – 1:46
  11. "This Perfect Day" (Peel Session 22) – 4:18
Disc 3 (Live show for XFM Radio, 14 April 1999)
  1. "Shake-Off" – 3:55
  2. "F-'Oldin' Money" – 2:41
  3. "Jet Boy" (David Johansen, Johnny Thunders) – 1:56
  4. "Touch Sensitive" – 3:21
  5. "Antidotes" – 2:46
  6. "10 Houses of Eve" – 3:43
  7. "Inevitable" – 2:43
  8. "This Perfect Day" – 2:30

Personnel

The Fall

Additional personnel

References

  1. ↑ Allmusic review
  2. ↑ The Guardian review
  3. ↑ "The Marshall Suite: The Fall: Amazon.co.uk: Music". Amazon.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
  4. ↑ "Wire-Adventures in Sound and Music". Thewire.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
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