As is the ever-giving nature and brilliance of The Fall, there will always be albums that, with time, distance, understanding and reappraisal, will gain a new sense of potency in their back catalogue. I Am Kurious Oranj was always a brilliant, unexpected and complete statement, but sitting as their 11th album, looking back, it seems to embody a period of The Fall in which pop and experimental music were very much one and the same for them. The twisted sister of Hip Priest, New Big Prinz remains a monstrously powerful opening track that sets a tone for a record that bounces along with grizzly venom as much as it does infectious funk and groggy grooves. Considering Mark E Smith and his then wife/band partner Brix Smith’s relationship was crumbling, along with supposedly rising drug and alcohol use for the frontman, there’s a weird cohesion to this record: proving that even amidst swarming chaos, The Fall were still capable of plucking beauty from carnage.
Written by Daniel Dylan Wray. Re-released on Beggars Archive.