This Nation's Saving Grace is the eighth studio album by the English post-punk band the Fall, released in 1985 by Beggars Banquet. In contrast to the band's earlier albums, This Nation's... is noted for its pop sensibilities and guitar hooks, and John Leckie's accessible production. In 2002, Pitchfork placed it as the 13th best album of the 1980s.
Background and line-up
thumb|upright=1.2|[[Steve Hanley (musician)|Steve Hanley and Brix Smith performing live, 1984]]
The Fall's line-up had been stable for a number of years until November 1984 when, during a promotional tour for their preceding album "The Wonderful and Frightening World of...", long-time members, brothers Paul Hanley (drums) and Steve Hanley (bass) both quit. Their departures were triggered by an incident on the first of that month when the band's equipment was stolen from a van left parked after a gig in Cardiff's New Ocean Hotel. Although replacement equipment was arranged, Smith blamed the musicians for the loss. The following night, while hitting their tour-bus headrests with a stick, shouted "who the fuck would be stupid enough to leave a fucking van outside a hotel with all the fucking gear in it". After this, both brothers decided to leave the band. Paul Hanley's departure became permanent, leaving Karl Burns the band's sole drummer, while Steve Hanley was eventually persuaded by Smith to come back after taking paternity leave for several months. According to Brix, the bassist's exit left Smith "chastened...for probably the only time I have ever seen". The self-taught Hanley has since admitted to being disillusioned by being replaced by a multi-instrumentalist, composer of ballets who had scored the 1982 top 20 hit "Cacharpaya" with folk music group Incantation. Smith marked Hanley's rejoining the band with the words "S Hanley! He's Back" etched into the run-out groove on Side 1.
The Fall recorded their eighth Peel session on 14 May 1985. The recordings contain early versions of three songs from This Nation's... ("Couldn't Get Ahead", "Spoilt Victorian Child" and "Gut of the Quantifier") as well as a version of "Cruiser's Creek".
Their ninth session, recorded on 29 September, includes recordings of "L.A." and "What You Need" that writer Steve Pringle describes as "brighter and sharper" than the album versions.
Recording
The album was recorded between June and July 1985 at the London studios the Music Works and the Workhouse on Old Kent Road. John Leckie had produced the band's 1984 album The Wonderful and Frightening World Of... and had built a strong working relationship with Smith. Leckie's approach to the project was to both retain the Fall's rough edges and solid rhythm section, while emphasising Brix's more pop orientated guitar parts. His production created a heavier wall of sound than their earlier releases and Smith praised his ability to bring forward the drum and bass parts. Smith later said that what he and Leckie were trying to achieve was a "well produced bedroom sound".
Music and lyrics
Steve Hanley had often been the group's main riff writer on earlier albums, but due to his absence in the lead up to the album,
Smith's lyrics are typically caustic throughout; the music critic John Mulvey wrote that at times the "vile is positively phantasmagoric". It is built around a guitar riff from Brix that evokes early horror and sci-fi film music and is clearly influenced by The Deviants' 1969 song "Billy the Monster". The following track "Bombast" is dominated by Hanley's bass. Smith's vocals promise to "bring wrath" to "bastard idiots" (including Lloyd Cole, whom Smith described in the September Peel session version of "Crusier's Creek" as having a "brain and face...made out of cowpat. We all know that)",
The 1985 cassette version contains the bonus track "Vixen", a melodic surf music song written and sung by Brix, which is described by Pringle as "rather slight" but was well-regarded by fans. It was never played live.
Side one ends with Brix's "L.A.", written while the Smiths spent an extended stay in the city. Mark had a poor impression of the city and said that he "Hated it...Horrible town. If you like a beer, you are regarded as a tramp."
Side two
Side two opens with "Gut of the Quantifier", the central bassline of which is reminiscent of the Doors's The Changeling. "My New House" details the Smiths' purchase of a semi-detached in Sedgley Park, Prestwich, close to Mark's childhood home where his parents still lived. A number of visitors remarked how unusual the house was, in particular the blue/grey colour scheme used in each room. The lyrics are humorous and sardonic Although a fan favourite, and described by the Daily News David Hinkley as "near-hypnotic", it was dropped from their live set after 1986. Credited to Smith, Scanlon and Rogers, it blends studio recordings with sections recorded on a four track in Rogers' flat and audio from Smith's dictaphone. During the mixing, Smith took the master tape home and accidentally erased part of the track with a section from an Open University documentary lecture on "red giants stars". as "mildly psychedelic" in 2011 by critic Mick Middles, who Smith has often described as an early and major influence. The lyrics describe and evoke Suzuki's stage presence and singing style and are accompanied by Brix's descending chords and Burns' metronomic drums. The music is heavily influenced by the 1971 Can song "Oh Yeah", but also contains elements of other Can tracks such as "Bel Air" (1973), "Gomorrah" (1974) and "Midnight Men" (1977). This is evident especially in the descending chords, which are similar to the earlier Fall track "Elves" (also written by Brix, and based on the Stooges "I Wanna Be Your Dog". "I Am Damo Suzuki"was described in 2022 as a "hypnotic art-rock anthem befitting of [Can's] name", while in 2019 Suzuki biographer Paul Woods wrote that "MES took the 'Oh Yeah' riff and overrode it with a speed-freak surrealist tribute to Can and Damo himself while throwing in an oblique reference to Fritz Leiber, one of a number of supernatural horror authors who also obsessed him."
The word "Yarbles" in the title of "To NK Roachment: Yarbles" is borrowed from the novel A Clockwork Orange as Nadsat for testicles. For Hinkley, the song is reminiscent of Dire Straits. and was accompanied by a music video directed by both Mark and Cerith Wyn Evans, and stars Leigh Bowery in a role Smith described as resembling "a clerk on acid, like he was from some alternative world".
The other two bonus tracks are a cover of Gene Vincent's rockabilly song "Rollin' Dany", and the original "Couldn't Get Ahead", which was recorded before Steve Hanley rejoined and has Rogers playing bass.
Release
This Nation's Saving Grace was released on 23 September 1985 by Beggars Banquet Records. This Nation's Saving Grace reached number 54 on the UK Albums Chart. After tours of the north of England and the US, the Fall recorded the double A-sided single "Couldn't Get Ahead"/"Rollin' Dany" and subsequent single "Cruiser's Creek" with Rogers standing in on bass guitar.
Reception
This Nation's Saving Grace was highly praised by the UK music press on release. The NMEs David Quantick wrote the Fall had managed to create "one of their most accessible LPs yet" which was yet "infinitely more peculiar than almost anything else released this year." In a very positive review for Sounds, Chris Roberts wrote "Oh, to be thirteen again and have this be the first record one heard". Conversely, a blurb on the album in Cashbox was dismissive: "This is post wave rock 'n' roll for the depressed teenager."
NME ranked "TNSG" as the sixth best album of 1985. Listeners of John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show voted six songs from This Nation's Saving Grace to the annual Festive Fifty list: "Cruiser's Creek" (no. 3), "Spoilt Victorian Child" (no. 23), "Gut of the Quantifier" (no. 33), "Couldn't Get Ahead" (no. 39), "L.A." (no. 42), and "Rollin' Dany" (no. 55). Jim Sullivan of The Boston Globe and Kristine McKenna of the Los Angeles Times also ranked the album in their top ten best albums of the year.
Retrospective evaluation
Bruce Tiffee of Pitchfork described the album as "one of the strongest" Fall releases and "perhaps the best record to emerge from the Beggars Banquet Fall era".
In 2002, This Nation's... was listed by Pitchfork as the 13th best album of the 1980s, while it appeared at number 46 on Spins list of the 100 greatest albums from 1985 to 2005, and as number 93 on Slant Magazines 2012 list of the best albums of the 1980s. NME placed the album as number 400 on their 2013 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
The record was ranked number 441 in the third edition of writer Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000), a list based on a poll of more than 200,000 people. According to Larkin's The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Brix's "partly melodious sheen ... brought an air of 60s subculture to the group's post-industrial rattle", without compromising the band's "stubbornly maverick" roots, as the album "shows the Fall extending stylistic barriers without sacrificing their individuality."
In his 2022 book "You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record", Steve Pringle describes the album as the "perfect marriage of The Fall's increasing accessibility and their more challenging qualities". According to Pringle "it contains a flawless balance of everything the group did exceptionally well: aural barrage and grinding repetition, off-kilter pop-hooks, sonic experimentation and audacious weirdness."
Legacy
James Murphy—best known as the frontman of New York dance-punk band LCD Soundsystem—purchased This Nation's Saving Grace the year of its release and said its aesthetic initially "terrified" him. He later said it was a formative influence:
Murphy said the album inspired him to take greater risks in his music and, more specifically, noted its impact on the lo-fi intro to "Yr City's a Sucker" from LCD Soundsystem's 2005 self-titled debut album, akin to the tape experimentation of "Paint Work". On the band's 2017 album American Dream, the song "Other Voices" alludes to "L.A." with the line, "This is what's happening and it's freaking you out".
Reissue
An extended version of the album was issued in 2011 on the Beggars Banquet reissue imprint "Beggars Archive". The 42-track box-set was accompanied by a 48-page colour booklet and two discs of rough studio mixes and Peel sessions.