''Bend Sinister'' is the ninth studio album by English

post-punk Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of punk music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-roc ...

band the Fall. It was released in September 1986 by record label Beggars Banquet.

Recording and production

''Bend Sinister'' was the third and last Fall album to be produced by

John Leckie John William Leckie (born 23 October 1949) is an English record producer and recording engineer. His production credits include Magazine's ''Real Life'' (1978), XTC's ''White Music'' (1978) and Dukes of Stratosphear's ''25 O'Clock'' (1985), t ...

. When recording began, the band was without a drummer, as

Karl Burns Karl Burns (born Carl Birtles,1958 in Manchester, England) is a British musician best known as the drummer for the Fall, featuring in many incarnations of the band between 1977 and 1998. Although several musicians have rejoined the Fall havi ...

was fired shortly before sessions began. Ex-member Paul Hanley stepped in at first before permanent replacement

Simon Wolstencroft Simon John Wolstencroft (born 19 January 1963 in Altrincham, Cheshire) is an English rock drummer, best known for playing with The Fall from 1986 to 1997. He also played with early incarnations of The Smiths and The Stone Roses. His highly pra ...

was found. However, Leckie and

Mark E. Smith Mark Edward Smith (5 March 1957 – 24 January 2018) was an English singer, who was the lead singer, lyricist and only constant member of the post-punk group the Fall. Smith formed the band after attending the June 1976 Sex Pistols gig at the ...

argued during the recording, with Smith complaining that "he'd always swamp everything, y'know, put the psychedelic sounds over it". Leckie, for his part, drew the line at Smith's insistence that some tracks be mastered from a standard audio cassette that Smith had been carrying around and listening to on a

Walkman Walkman, stylised as , is a brand of portable audio players manufactured and marketed by Japanese technology company Sony since 1979. The original Walkman was a portable cassette player and its popularity made "walkman" an unofficial term for ...

Julia Adamson Julia Adamson (also known as Julia Nagle from 1988 to 2006) (born September 30, 1960 in Peterborough, Ontario) is a Canadian composer, musician and current label manager of Invisiblegirl Records.Simpson, Dave (2009) ''The Fallen'', Canongate Book ...

, who engineered some of the recording sessions, would eventually join the Fall in 1995 as a keyboard/guitar player.

Content

The album's title, a

heraldic Heraldry is a discipline relating to the design, display and study of armorial bearings (known as armory), as well as related disciplines, such as vexillology, together with the study of ceremony, rank and pedigree. Armory, the best-known branc ...

term, is taken from Vladimir Nabokov's 1947 novel of the same name.

Release

''Bend Sinister'' was released in June 1986 by Beggars Banquet. It reached number 36 in the UK charts. It also became the first Fall album to be released on CD, with the addition of single "Living Too Late" and B-side "Auto-Tech Pilot". The record was released in the USA and Australia in 1987 on

Big Time Records Big Time Records was an independent record label based in Sydney, Australia. The label was owned by Lance Reynolds and Fred Bestall, who managed Air Supply in their early days, among others. From 1979 until 1981, Big Time was distributed by Wi ...

re-titled as ''The Domesday Pay-Off Triad -Plus!'' with a different cover art, and replacing several tracks with songs from non-album singles " Hey! Luciani" (released on 8 December 1986) and " There's a Ghost in My House" (released on 27 April 1987). The album was reissued by Beggars Arkive in March 2019. The new 2CD/2LP edition, titled ''Bend Sinister / The Domesday Pay-Off Triad-Plus!'', was newly transferred and remastered from original analogue tapes, and features original album on disc 1 and non-album tracks from the contemporary singles on disc 2; in addition, the CD version contains the 1986

Peel session John Robert Parker Ravenscroft (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey (DJ) and radio presenter. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly fr ...

and several previously unreleased alternate mixes.

Critical reception

''Bend Sinister'' was ranked number 7 among the "Albums of the Year" for 1986 by ''

NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...

''. In his retrospective review, Ned Raggett of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

described it as a "distinctly down affair", while ''

Trouser Press ''Trouser Press'' was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow fan of the Who Dave Schulps and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" (a reference to ...

'' called it "a rather gloomy, dark-sounding record". Al Spicer, in ''The Rough Guide to Rock'', called the album "not a great album by Fall standards". Neither Smith nor Leckie spoke highly of the album in later years. Nonetheless, the record contains the group's version of "Mr. Pharmacist", originally by US

garage rock Garage rock (sometimes called garage punk or 60s punk) is a raw and energetic style of rock and roll that flourished in the mid-1960s, most notably in the United States and Canada, and has experienced a series of subsequent revivals. The sty ...

band The Other Half, which gave the Fall their first UK Top 75 entry and remained a regular feature of the group's live set.

Track listing

Vinyl LP

CD/cassette

''The Domesday Pay-Off Triad-Plus!''

2019 reissue

Disc 1 (''Bend Sinister'')

* As per original 1986 LP

Disc 2 (''The Domesday Pay-Off Triad-Plus!'')

*Tracks 13-17 are previously unreleased. Tracks 9-18 only available on CD version.

Personnel

; The Fall *

– vocals, tapes, keyboards, guitar *

Brix Smith Brix Smith (born Laura Elisse Salenger) is an American singer and guitarist, best known as the lead guitarist and a major songwriter for the English post-punk band The Fall during two stints in the band (1983-1989, and 1994-1996). Acknowledging ...

– lead guitar, keyboards, vocals * Steve Hanley – bass guitar, guitar *

Craig Scanlon Craig Antony Scanlon (born 7 December 1960 in Manchester) is an English guitarist, best known as a member of the Fall between 1979 and 1995. Despite his surname being spelled 'Scanlon' he was wrongly credited as 'Craig Scanlan' on every record h ...

– acoustic and electric guitar *

Simon Rogers Simon Rogers is an English musician, record producer and composer who has been a member of The Fall, and The Lightning Seeds. Biography In 1976, Rogers entered the Royal College of Music, London, later becoming an associate (ARCM) and winni ...

– keyboards, guitar, programming *

(credited as 'John' S. Woolstencroft) – drums, percussion ; Additional personnel * Paul Hanley – drums on "Dktr Faustus", "Living Too Late", "Hot Aftershave Bop", "Living Too Long", and "Luciani" (original version) ; Technical *

– production *

Ian Broudie Ian Zachary Broudie (born 4 August 1958) is an English musician and singer-songwriter from Liverpool. After emerging from the post-punk scene in Liverpool in the late 1970s as a member of Big in Japan, Broudie went on to produce albums (somet ...

– production on "Hey! Luciani" *

Dale Griffin Terence Dale "Buffin" Griffin (24 October 1948 – 17 January 2016) was an English drummer and a founding member of 1970s rock band Mott the Hoople. Later, he worked as a producer, and produced many of the BBC Radio 1 John Peel sessions from 1 ...

– production on Peel sessions * The Fall – production on "Town and Country Hobgoblins" * Tony Harris – engineering * Joe Gillingham – engineering (uncredited) *

– engineering (uncredited) * Mike Engles – engineering on Peel sessions * Mark E. Smith – sleeve design * Steve Webbon – artwork * Jeff Veitch – sleeve photography * Kint B. – sleeve photography * Larry Rodriguez – sleeve photography * Lars Schwander – sleeve photography * Steve Saporito – sleeve photography

References

{{Authority control 1986 albums The Fall (band) albums Albums produced by John Leckie Beggars Banquet Records albums