Low Culture Podcast: The Fall’s Perverted By Language

John Doran and Luke Turner head back to 1983 and dig deep into a transition record for MES and The Fall group

It’s confession time in this month’s Low Culture Podcast as John Doran admits that he used to have The Fall (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)’s ‘Tempo House’ on a tape and would tell his pals that his band had written it. Why did he do so? Because it was a magical moment, the first Fall track he’d heard that really made sense. It’s a Fall special for the pod as John and Luke Turner discuss the group’s 1983 album Perverted By Language, as selected for this month by our readers and subscribers. Interestingly, the sixth Fall album won the reader poll by a country mile – is this because it was a transition record that led to their late 80s greatness, with the arrival of Brix giving Mark E Smith a new-found confidence? John explains how The Fall (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) acted as a “surrogate for a pre-cog love of Krautrock”, and goes into an insane wormhole into the lyrics of ‘Tempo House’, involving Winston Churchill, Richard Burton, the physical Tempo House in south-west London, insurance, The Glitter Band, The BEF – both the Second World War army and the Sheffield-based band. While the album isn’t taken as seriously by some Fall heads as Hex Enduction Hour, John and Luke point out it it’s still full of psychedelic, mystical wonder, at times Blakeian, full of religious references and connections to folklore, the occult and witchcraft. Perverted By Language all holds together despite the weird structure of the record, the odd choice of opening track, the others that ought to have been on there – all pointing to the truth that with The Fall (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) you don’t get what you want, you get what you need. Further choice cuts include tQ’s editors revealing which Fall records are stinkers (yes, there are a few), a push back against the academic takes, Luke’s basic Fall taste and why it’s impossible to choose which of their records you’d rescue from a fire.

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