Bend Sinister

 

Front cover

Group

Mark E Smith – vocals, tapes
Brix Smith – guitar, keyboards, vocals
Craig Scanlon – guitar
Steve Hanley – bass, guitar
Simon Rogers – keyboards, guitar
Simon Wolstencroft – drums, percussion (all except tracks 2 & 11)
Paul Hanley – drums (tracks 2 & 11)

Recording

Yellow 2, Stockport; Abbey Road, London; Square One, Bury mid 1986.
Except Track 13 recorded at Town and Country Club, London 12/7/86

Production

John Leckie

Releases

  • UK 29 September 1986 Beggars Banquet LP: BEGA75; cassette: BEGC75; CD: BEGA75CD (later pressings: BBL75CD)
  • USA/Australia = 1987 Bigtime Records as The Domesday Pay-off Triad Plus LP 6039-1
  • March 2019 – Beggars Arkive

Tracks

  1. R.O.D. (Rogers/Scanlon/Smith, ME/Smith, B/Wolstencroft) 4:31
  2. Dktr. Faustus (Scanlon/Smith, ME) 5:32
  3. Shoulder Pads 1# (Smith, ME/Smith, B) 2:54
  4. Mr. Pharmacist(Nowlen) 2:17
  5. Gross Chapel-British Grenadiers (Hanley, S/Scanlon/Smith, ME) 7:20
  6. U.S. 80’s-90’s (Smith, ME/Smith, B) 4:34
  7. Terry Waite Sez (Smith, ME/Smith, B) 1:37
  8. Bournemouth Runner(Hanley, S/Smith, ME/Smith, B) 6:05
  9. Riddler! (Rogers/Smith, ME/Smith, B) 6:19
  10. Shoulder Pads 2# (Smith, ME/Smith, B) 1:56
  11. Living Too Late (Smith, ME) 4:35
  12. Auto-Tech Pilot (Hanley, S/Smith, ME) 4:51
  13. Town And Country Hobgoblins (Riley/Scanlon/Hanley, S/Smith, ME) 3:00

Notes
One of the more complicated Fall albums with multiple variations between various formats and releases:

Release 1
LP Tracks 1-10
Cassette 1-5, 11, 6-10, 12-13
CD 1-5, 11, 6-10, 12

Release 2
There’s A Ghost In My House (Dozier/Holland/Holland/R. Dean Taylor) 2:36
Track 6
Track 3
Track 4
Track 9
Hey Luciani (Hanley, S/Smith, ME) 3:34
Haf Found Bormann (Smith, ME) 2:43
Track 7
Track 1
Track 10
Track 5

Tracks 1 & 7 from the single There’s A Ghost In My House; tracks 2-5 & 8-11 from the original UK album; track 6 from the single Hey! Luciani.

As for the Beggars Arkive releases

LP TRACK LISTING:

  • A1. R.O.D.
  • A2. Dktr. Faustus
  • A3. Shoulder Pads 1#
  • A4. Mr. Pharmacist
  • A5. Gross Chapel – British Grenadiers
  • B1. U.S. 80’s – 90’s
  • B2. Terry Waite Sez
  • B3. Bournemouth Runner
  • B4. Riddler!
  • B5. Shoulder Pads 2#
  • C1. Living Too Late (From the Living Too Late single)
  • C2. Hot Aftershave Bop (From the Living Too Late single)
  • C3. Lucifer Over Lancashire (From the Mr.Pharmacist single)
  • C4. Auto Tech Pilot (From the Mr.Pharmacist single)
  • D1. Hey! Luciani (from the Hey! Luciani single)
  • D2. Entitled (from the Hey! Luciani single)
  • D3. Shoulder Pads #1b (from the Hey! Luciani single)
  • D4. Living Too Long (From the Living Too Late single)

CD TRACK LISTING:

1-1. R.O.D.
1-2. Dktr. Faustus
1-3. Shoulder Pads 1#
1-4. Mr. Pharmacist
1-5. Gross Chapel – British Grenadiers
1-6. U.S. 80’s – 90’s
1-7. Terry Waite Sez
1-8. Bournemouth Runner
1-9. Riddler!
1-10. Shoulder Pads 2#
2-1. Living Too Late (Remastered/from the Living Too Late single)
2-2. Hot Aftershave Bop (Remastered/from the Living Too Late single)
2-3. Lucifer Over Lancashire (Remastered/from the Mr.Pharmacist single)
2-4. Auto Tech Pilot (Remastered/from the Mr.Pharmacist single)
2-5. Hey! Luciani (Remastered/from the Hey! Luciani single)
2-6. Entitled (Remastered/from the Hey! Luciani single)
2-7. Shoulder Pads #1b (Remastered/from the Hey! Luciani single)
2-8. Living Too Long (Remastered/from the Living Too Late single)
2-9. R. O. D (Peel Session, June 29 1986)
2-10. Gross Chapel – British Grenadiers (Peel Session, June 29 1986)
2-11. U. S. 80s – 90s (Peel Session, June 29 1986)
2-12. Hot Aftershave Bop (Peel Session, June 29 1986)
2.13. Luciani (Original version, previously unreleased)
2.14. DKTR. Faustus (Rough mix, previously unreleased)
2.15. Terry Waite Sez (Yellow 2 Mix, previously unreleased)
2.16. Lucifer Over Lancashire (Abbey Road Take 2, previously unreleased)
2.17. Entitled (Abbey Road Take 2, previously unreleased)
2.18. Town And Country Hobgoblins (Live, from the Bend Sinister cassette release)

The third and last Fall album to be produced by John Leckie. When recording began, the band was without a drummer, as Karl Burns was fired shortly before sessions began. Ex-member Paul Hanley stepped in at first before permanent replacement Simon Wolstencroft was hired.

Leckie and Mark E. Smith argued during the recording, with Smith complaining that “he’d always swamp everything, y’know, put the psychedelic sounds over it”. Leckie, for his part, drew the line at Smith’s insistence that some tracks be mastered from a standard audio cassette that Smith had been carrying around and listening to on a Walkman.

Future group member Julia Adamson,  engineered some of the recording sessions.

The album’s title, a heraldic term, is taken from Vladimir Nabokov’s 1947 novel of the same name.

It reached number 36 in the UK charts. It was the first Fall album to be released on CD.

Bend Sinister was ranked number 7 among the “Albums of the Year” for 1986 by NME.

In his retrospective review, Ned Raggett of AllMusic described it as a “distinctly down affair”, while Trouser Press called it “a rather gloomy, dark-sounding record”. Al Spicer, in The Rough Guide to Rock, called the album “not a great album by Fall standards”.

The ubiquitous  “Mr. Pharmacist” became the song would perform live the most with US 80s-90s being the self-penned track on the album with the greatest longevity with over 100 performances.

Clearly the Beggars Arkive versions is the best version to acquire with it’s superior sound and complete set of extant releases.

REVIEWS

Simon Reynolds, “Fall Guise” Melody Maker, October 4, 1986 

The Fall have not stopped being The Fall. It’s all here, on this their 26th long playing record the wizened sneer, the unforgiving beat, the haggard guitar. The Fall roll on.

A vast body of work, around which a million words have been split, and still I don’t feel nearer a notion of what they’re about. The Fall don’t represent or propose anything. They cannot be recruited to any scheme, clarified or filed away. They are this stubborn thing.

What spikes the lumbering wrath of The Fall is the vehemence of Mark E. Smith’s invective. But these days even his targets remain shrouded and unclear. While The Fall’s music has grown steadily more vivacious and approachable, Smith’s writing has folded in on itself in an ever denser scrawl, beyond decipherment, let alone understanding. Sometimes the obscure object of his derision is recognisable as … people like me, and then I’m suitably, pleasurably, chastened. The Fall, on leash, as periodic flagellation: “Who makes the Nazis? intellectual halfwits.” Ouch. I needed that. Perhaps that was the only thing I ever learned from Mark E. Smith.

The Fall are an example of the extent to which indie music has become a kind of commentary on pop – a system which purports to represent us, but in fact excludes most of our experience. Indie-pop is a kind of parallel system, unacknowledged by POP, but bound in reaction. Like, say The Smiths, The Fall write about all the matter – squalor, maladjustment, antagonism – written out of pop’s script. If Mark E. Smith represents anything it is bloodymindedness, a recalcitrance towards those who would improve us out of our bad habits and prejudices.

They’ve been a bad influence. Groups like The Membranes and Age Of Chance think that anyone with “attitude” can get up and do it. The upshot of this is a kind of bolshiness without manifesto, an aimless spite: musically, a narrow interpretation of The Fall – beauty is a lie. These groups consist of nothing but anti-pop gesture.

The Fall are un-pop, too anti-dance, anti-spectacle, unsensual but they have carved out a rival territory of alien beauty that they can exploit indefinitely. If the broad sweep of this music: has been established there’s still endless scope for growth through internal complication.

“Bend Sinister”, their thirty-third album, shows that the Fall have a long way to go before they’re exhausted. You’ve probably heard their version of “Mr Pharmacist”, with Mark’s great slovenly delivery, like his mouth was half-full of mushy peas. There are other indications that The Fall have been steeping themselves in Sixties garage music of late. Tracks like “Gross Chapel” sound as though The Fall have taken the wiry truculence of garage punk and bloated it into a juggernaut sprawl. “Shoulder Pads” is driven along by an absurdly jaunty keyboard riff that makes me think of Question Mark And The Mysterians.

As it becomes less and less clear what Mark E. Smith is on about, so The Fall noise has come to seem more and more unearthly. When I listen I don’t think of grime and rubble and dilapidation, like I used to. I don’t think of much at all. It’s a noise to lose yourself in, something that clouds the mind, roughs you up a bit and leaves you a little deranged.

LINKS

Retrospective from Get Into This