One label, two albums so far.

Technically it should be MS with it's added discs of goodies, but being as the reviews suggested the remastering (especially with the XFM do) was too bass-heavy, it didn't make me rush out and buy it.

Ersatz, then. :devil2:

The Marshall Suite was an astonishing achiievement - I think it was released almost a year after the Brownies break-up.
It's often said to be one of their best, but it doesn't appeal to me as much as most other Fall albums and it's reputation (beyond, as I say, how astonishing it was given the circumstances) doesn't tally with my own feelings about its contents.
I LOVE Touch Sensitive, F'oldin Money and This Perfect Day - but I wish MES attacked the lyrics more on TPD - I remember Capps talking about a live version before the album came out where MES was really intense, I think.
I like Birthday Song and On My Own, but some of the rest either sounds a little too Zep or just isn't up to the album's best.
It's still better than mots other albums by everyone else, just not a Fall album I listen to as much as the others.

Ersatz GB is a joy from beginning to end. The first two songs are two of my favourite Fall songs ever and the last two, and Monocard aren't far behind.
I prefer it to The Marshall Suite by some distance.

If we're talking the original mix, MS wins. If we're talking the re-release, Ersatz wins. Some of the production on EGB is so annoying, though, that I'm praying for a re-master of THAT, sooner rather than later. :lol:

MS is fairly tame or conventional in comparion to the album before and after, isn't it?
Levitate = bonkers, scary, heavy, on the verge of collapse Fall and The Unutterable is just perfect and weird and utterly unique from beginning to end.

I half-agree with you... :D NOTHING in the Fall canon is like 'Levitate.' It's just this amazing, innovative one-off. The Unutterable, and I know I'm probably alone in feeling this way, is strictly Fall-by-numbers, Fall trying to sound like the Fall by doing Fall-like songs, if that makes any sense (and it may not.) Way Round = L.A., etc. It's beautifully produced, and the group sounds like they're having a blast, so I have no problem listening to and enjoying Unutterable, but I rate it somewhere in the mushy middle in the ranks of Fall elpees...

MS isn't conventional to me because it's so inconsistent, and the production (on the original) is so weird. You get everything from strings to cod-metal to hushed ballads to rousing anthems to Saints covers. :D

Definitely, and it's so confident in all those styles, it seems to me.
Mind you, nothing's ever really done with trepidation on any Fall album, is it.
That is astonishing about just a year passing between Brownies and the Marshall Suite's release, isn't it?
Incredible.

I don;t know if that's because MES is a genius (i think he is, but in this instance) or just the fact that most other bands take so long and are far more cautious with album releases (esp. after band changes) and so on, so a band forming and releasing such a great album in a year seems more incredible than it is.

Marshall Suite is definitely my favourite classical techno house n bass krautbilly punktronica reggae record. B)

Areed with all of that. As you said above, the fact that Marshall Suite even exists at all, much less is so rich and full of energy, is astonishing. Most groups would put out a greatest hits album at that point, and taken 5 years off. MES regroups, and does 'Touch Sensitive,' one of their all-time classic songs, IMO. If you were just buying albums, and not following the ups and downs of the line-ups, you'd think nothing bad had happened (except that there was no '98 album, only Post-Nearly Man came out that year.) The next album should've been called 'The Unsinkable.' :D

Listening to MS now, it's amazing.

There's no way this should work, the way it lurches seemingly from one obtuse style to another to another and back again, mental. Yet work it does. Even the filler tracks, 'Early Life of CM' and 'Mad Men Eng Dog' seem to fit and I hate filler as a rule.

Equal votes all round so far seems fair, though. :)

On account of not particularly liking half-arsed crap thrown together when the pub closed featuring The Worst Vocals Ever recorded by man or indeed wildebeest, I think I'll go for TMS.
But maybe that's just me.

No, no, no, I'm simply not having that.

There's no way that Ersatz GB's that good.

Someone warned me.
But I was still disappointed. :(

The fact that you were disappointed must mean it isn't very good.
Definitely.
Nothing wrong with that reasoning.
And therefore, anyone who does like it must either be mistaken or deluding themselves.
Watertight logic.
In no way is that the conclusion of a man with a phallus for a brain.
No diddley!

*shesnotbeenverywellbestmoveonsorryaboutthis*

The problem with these comparison polls is quite simply that EGB has been out for three months and Grotesque or Hex or PBL or whatever have been out for 20 odd years.

That is a long time spent with a band that you like and gradually grow to love and consequently listen to, analyse, relisten to etc. All the Fall albums you got in your youth have been there to hear all through your life. All the hooks, odd lyrics, mess ups, volume fuck ups, crap artwork, flat production etc. all become positives.

I'm not saying that EGB is the best Fall record ever made but that it's just as viable for the obsessive and effusive praise that all the classic albums get simply because they were there first at the right time to become significant in The Fall's canon and in a fan's life.

Three months and you've already decided have you?
That'll change in years to come, because it did for all the others. In their own way YFOC & EGB mean something to me damnit! :rant:
And they will to someone hearing The Fall for the first time.

I don't think MES has ever stopped trying to amuse and infuriate the next generation of hardcore music lovers with his work, hell most older fans can't get their heads around the recent output, some of them write it off as crap because they think they've already heard the apex of The Fall, so think how revered EGB could be by people hearing it now, are they wrong?

Course I know this is just for larks. :)

Crap, if you don't mind me saying.

Fair enough. :(

I prefer Ersatz GB, although I like MS.

Anyone who disagrees is a Look Back Bore who likes Coldplay and doesn't go and see live Fall etc etc etc (insert favourite comment aimed at those who are not sufficiently effusive in praise of the latest efforts by the Dear Leader). :D

I'm enjoying being on the other side of the argument this time around.

I'm going to sit on the fence with this.

I thought The Marshall Suite re-package was great and very good value. The live disc was a real surprise and has given me fresh appreciation of this underrated album.

Ersatz is a typical grower which sounded ordinary initially but now ranks well after a break between repeated listens.

(Taking into consideration the comments about Ersatz GB on various threads and looking at the 2008 Fall Albums League Table I reckon it would slide in somewhere between Extricate & MCR)

I have really come to love Marshall Suite, but it does not sound very Fall-like to me.

I mean, MES has proven time and time again that he can take lots of different types of musicians and make them sound essentially like "The Fall" somehow. I think Marshall Suite is the exception to that rule cause it sounds like MES vocalling. for some band that is wonderful, but is not "The Fall."