Which?

Country On The Click by 500 yards.

IWS, definitely, even though I haven't listened to it enough to properly get my head around it yet. I hereby withdraw anything snotty I've said about Pete Greenway - he's ten, twenty times the guitarist that Planky Pritchard was. Some lovely guitar sounds and arrangements on the new album.

I thought Jim Watts played most of the guitars on TRNFLP, didn't he?

TRNFLP is one of the 5 best Fall albums ever and I don't think IWS is going to breach that at this stage.

Oh, I didn't know that. Either way, most of it is clunky identikit indie rock in comparison to the best of the Fall's work. (I like Contraflow well enough, for example, but I'm not sure what it's doing in the Fall's canon.) It and its successor sorely lack the requisite strangeness, by which I don't mean wacky bits or twelve-minute U-Boat epics - a more subtle and hard to define quality than that, but one which is present on Reformation and the new one in spades (funnily, although a lot of it is not particularly good, AYAMW does have this quality).

iws by some way.

IWS the best since RNFLP, and is the clear winner IMO.

RNFLP.

No doubt in my mind at this stage.

i agree completely.

RNFLP was a good lp, but not a great fall lp. the songs were better than AYAMW, but it didn't seem to have that extra something that IWS (or most great fall records) has. in retrospect, i find RNFLP a bit stiff, as if it were put together over time in a studio by session musicians who had never played together.

AYAMW had the extra something, but bugger all else (the songs weren't too great, the performances were lacking etc). but it did sound like a band playing, albeit a dispirited one.

I simply can't vote in this one as I think very very highly of both. IWS might just get it at the present time as I'm a bit sick of some of the tracks on RNFLP but I'll probably feel the same about something on IWS in a few years.

By maybe a head, and only so far, IWS.

Because it's weirder. Lyrically they are well matched.

IWS slightly ahead for me - which is saying something.

ditto

And again. :beer:

I like the comparisons with AYAMW. I don't know if IWS will stand the test of time but when TRNFLP came out it was as if they had made a good stable record. Which now, as it did on the very first listen appears, ahem, stolid. IWS, especially Strangetown is cut from the same ragged cloth as AYAMW but so much better, the little quirks, the delivery from Mark varied and exciting, the fun, not the two fingered salute that was AYAMW but a dignified cackling waving. Von Sudenfeld has helped, and a band that isn't so deferential to his masters voice.

A to the point and excellent post. Well said, mostly agreed... Though I am not so sure about the two fingered salute so specifically...

Country On The Click

still imperial wax solvent

IWS - there's fewer duff-ish tracks for my money.

Nothing on Imperial Wax can touch 'Janet, James et al' also Id say that Country on the Click has the better lyrics overall.
However, the choons on Imperial are a lot more exciting, and after a number of listens its how your toes react and not so much the lyric content that will have you pressing repeat.
So Imperial Wax--another vote.

For my money there are no duff tracks on The Real New..... and only 1 on IWS (i,ve been duped) both fantastic albums, knew this poll was sure to happen, IWS is the one for me, tough call tho

The Real New Fall LP got my vote but that was because after all this time I keep coming back to it and still getting something from it. Hopefully that will be the same for IWS but gee I need a few more years.....
...but hey neither of them are Hex!! :D