New Facts Emerge is the 32nd studio album by the Fall—an undeniable miracle, all things considered. And a micro-miracle inside that big miracle is that, starting with 1999’s The Marshall Suite and including this brand-new document, Mark E. Smith has managed to put the Fall name on 12 studio full-lengths that not only measure up to the band’s heyday of a very long time ago but exist as strong contenders against the underground rock landscape onto which each album appeared over the last 18 years.
If New Facts Emerge reminds the listener of any post-millennial Fall album, I’d have to go with 2003’s The Real New Fall LP. You’d need to hire a consultant to follow the lineup turmoil that’s consistently swirled around Smith on the way to a year of activity and an album that really shouldn’t be possible, but the balance of fuck-around filler to forward-thinking tracks to what any fan would deem “a Fall classic” is contextually astonishing.
—Andrew Earles
