-=Shoreshop=-

The Fall

Touch Sensitive

NME - Single Of The Week (April '99)

If anything disproves the law of averages or the law of diminishing returns or any of those bleak general prognoses for humankind that are generally used to knock us down and buckle us under, it's this record. Effectively 'Rock'n'Roll (Part 39)', it's a stroppy trample through the mean streets of home, taking in al fresco urination, "Star Wars police vehicles" and people just getting in the way.

Really, there's little to be said. You know Mark E Smith. You know his genius. You'll no longer know his band, remember, because they have all been sacked or left, but it sounds like the change has done him a whole universe of good. A jubilant "Hey hey hey hey!" chorus, a bassline you'd swap your soul for - there's a wildly spirally sense of free-booting lunacy here. Like:"they said what about the meek / I said they've got a bloody cheek..."if you didn't know better, you'd guess 'Touch Sensitive' was a plea for understanding - at least, a demand to be left alone. Which is, after all, kind of the same thing. Whatever, it's arguably the most exhuberant thing he's done since *'Why Are People Grudgeful?' and it will (whisper it) make you very happy.

Altogether now, "And you're dying for a pee / so you go behind a tree..."Summers here, kids. Best take a raincoat all the same.

The review is accompanied by a picture of MES very suavely dressed with the words 'MM, RIGHT SUAVE: MR SMITH DELIVERS ANOTHER CORKER

*(NME Typical-Won't Sell A Thing Single Of The Week 1993)