The Marshall Suite

About The Marshall Suite

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 "The Crying Marshall". The album was long out of print, but a new 3-disc edition was released in the summer of 2011. 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. more »