My review of the latest record by The Fall was published on LEO Weekly‘s Bluegrass Catastrophe blog today:

It’s tempting to compare vastly different eras of The Fall’s career to one another. After all, The Fall has been a going affair for front man Mark E. Smith for five decades now, with Ersatz G.B. being the latest in a long line of releases. So to make the comparison, the latest, 2012 incarnation of The Fall documented on Ersatz G.B. reminds me most of the relatively accessible mid-1980s version, especially the lineup that recorded the classic album The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall. Musically, the band flirts with a slightly poppier yet hard-edged sound, including an atypical “metal” number, driven by the steady rhythm section of Keiron Melling on drums and David Spurr on bass. What little of Smith’s garbled vocals I can make out involve his usual concerns – he’s been lamenting “the highest British attention to the wrong detail” since 1982’s Hex Enduction Hour.

Buy it here.