Cerebral Caustic

Studio album by The Fall

Released

27 February 1995

Genre

Post-punk

Length

42:15

Label

Permanent

Producer

Mike Bennett, Mark E. Smith

The Fall chronology

Middle Class Revolt
(1994)

Cerebral Caustic
(1995)

The Twenty-Seven Points
(1995)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
NME	4/10

Cerebral Caustic is the seventeenth full-length studio album by British post-punk group The Fall, released in 1995 on Permanent Records. It spent one week on the UK charts at number 67, 19 places lower than its predecessor Middle Class Revolt, marking the end of one of the group's relatively more successful periods.

The album was most notable for the return of Brix Smith to the line-up, the guitarist having rejoined the group for live shows in 1994 after quitting in 1989. Her impact was immediate and she co-wrote 5 of this album's 12 tracks. Other tracks including a Frank Zappa cover and a re-recording of a 1990 b-side; "Life Just Bounces". Nevertheless, sales were lower than on other recent albums and the group, always a busy touring act, performed just 16 times during the year.Cerebral Caustic turned out to be the beginning of a period of considerable turbulence for the group; having not dismissed anyone since 1990, Mark E. Smith sacked keyboardist Dave Bush by letter shortly after the album's completion and guitarist Craig Scanlon, who had been with the band for 16 years and co-authored over 120 songs for The Fall, would be sacked during the sessions for epic single "The Chiselers" at the end of the year. Smith later admitted to MOJO magazine that he had developed a drink problem during this period and he accepted that this had impacted upon the group. Scanlon's dismissal is (as of March 2008) the only sacking that Smith has publicly regretted.

There were long-standing rumours that an alternative, superior mix of this album existed, partly fuelled by Mark E. Smith's statement in an interview released to the press on a promotional cassette that he and Karl Burns had re-recorded the guitars after the rest of the group had been ejected from the studio. This claim was later clarified by Smith in the interview included on the Castle Music reissue's bonus disc as referring only to opening track "The Joke" and also by comments from Dave Bush in Simon Ford's Hip Priest that he had been virtually erased from the album during the mixing process. The original "rough" mixes were included on the 2006 2CD reissue on Castle Music and showed no major differences to the released version; the sound is harsher (possibly the result of being mastered from a copy of the cassette) but Bush is no more predominant.

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Wikipedia