The Fall – Dragnet

With The Fall’s 1978 debut album Live at the Witch Trials, it was possible to see the group as more-or-less standard “post-punks" with a few unusual ideas. With its sequel Dragnet, it became clear that this band was really something different altogether.

In part that’s because this wasn’t the same band; mastermind/frontman Mark E. Smith had replaced all of the group apart from guitarist Marc Riley with new members, bringing the band ever closer to the first of The Fall’s definitive lineups.

New bass player Steve Hanley and guitarist Craig Scanlon would remain at the band’s core for at least the next decade, though drummer Mike Leigh would only last a year or so, being replaced by his predecessor Karl Burns, who would return regularly over the next few albums. The real change though was in Smith himself, whose work as a writer would begin to mirror the confidence that had always been evident in his unique vocal delivery.

The songs on Live at the Witch Trials had featured a distinctive but familiar landscape of post-industrial urban decay, bad drugs and street violence, but 1979's Dragnet was the first Fall album to feature narratives that stepped away, not just from typical post-punk tropes, but traditional ideas of how rock songs worked altogether.

As such it was hailed at the time as being both ugly and impenetrable – a difficult album which, along with Smith’s often combative demeanor, would see the Fall labelled as a difficult band. And yet, in terms of its tunes and melodies, Dragnet is hardly alien or inaccessible in the sense that the sonic experiments of contemporaries like Throbbing Gristle were – but its aura remains stubbornly forbidding.

Tracklist:
Psykick Dancehall 3:40
A Figure Walks 6:05
Printhead 3:05
Dice Man 1:45
Before The Moon Falls 4:20
Your Heart Out 2:45
Muzorewi's Daughter 3:40
Flat Of Angles 4:50
Choc-Stock 2:36
Spectre Vs. Rector 7:49
Put Away 3:24