Fall Monday Playlist #12 - Brix

 

The Fall played Chicago’s Cabaret Metro on 23 April 1983. In the audience was Laura Elisse Salenger, also known as Brix, a name she took from The Clash's 'Guns Of Brixton'. On meeting MES after the gig, she detected ‘something a little scary about him… he seemed angry, as if a simmering rage lay just below the surface’. A post-gig drink led to a whirlwind romance, with Brix and MES spending much of the rest of the tour in each other’s company. She came to England in May, and they were married on 19 July.

Brix had an undeniably significant impact on the Fall story, and it's certainly true that most of the group's most commercially viable moments occurred during her first stint in The Fall. That said, some commentators rather oversell the notion that she transformed them into some sort of pop act. The Wonderful And Frightening World was undoubtedly their most accessible album so far, but it still contained relatively 'difficult' material such as 'Lay Of The Land', 'Copped It' and 'Bug Day'. Furthermore, the shift in sound was more due to the influence of producer John Leckie. That is not to denigrate her contribution, however, and the contrast between her voice and Smith's became a defining feature of the groups mid-80s and mid-90s material.

This playlist is not intended to represent the 'best' moments of Brix's time in the group - I'm trying to avoid using songs twice so several great tracks on which she featured have already been 'taken'. Instead, it aims to capture some of her most notable contributions.

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2 x 4

Brix said that the ‘mental reference point' for this Wonderful And Frightening track 'was an American cartoon like Road Runner, where he would take a 2 x 4 which was a plank and whack 'em on the head. Tom and Jerry with the frying pan’. It’s also one of those tracks where Brix’s backing vocals are a perfect foil for Smith’s. One of the group’s most played songs, it clocked up an impressive 126 performances 1983-88. 

Don't Call Me Darling

Brix and MES separated in January 1989, but she made a surprise return to The Fall in 1994, MES claiming that he wanted 'someone to put some bite back into The Fall, to kick them all up the arse'. She was certainly prominent on Cerebral Caustic. Back in the mid-80s, Brix’s vocal contributions tended to work best where she offered a tuneful sweetness as a contrast to Smith’s rough acerbity. Here, there’s a role-reversal: Smith croons his way through the song while Brix is in full-on rasping shouty punk mode (her vocal chords would, she said, would be ‘thrashed’ after singing the song). 

Smith was keen to point out that the song was not actually about Brix. ‘There are no songs on the LP about Brix, not even “Don't Call Me Darling”. I write about ex-girlfriends, readies, the milkman... but never Brix. It's funny, you'd think I would, but I don't feel the need to.’ 

C.R.E.E.P.

Originally released as a single in 1984, it also appeared on the cassette and US versions of Wonderful And Frightening (as well as all the subsequent reissues). An idea rescued by Brix - who found a demo tape of it behind Smith’s sofa - it's an undoubtedly catchy tune, although a little lightweight for many Fall fans. It's frequently suggested that it's about Marc Riley (and occasionally Morrissey) but MES always denied this and Brix said that it was about a tour manager called Scumech - hence the line ‘he is a scum-egg, a horrid trendy wretch’. 

Cruiser's Creek

Released in October 1985, it was the group’s sixteenth single. It appears on as a bonus track on the reissues of This Nation's Saving Grace. It was inspired by the Smiths’ experiences of holidaying with Brix’s family:

‘You’ve never seen anything weirder than Mark E. Smith on a fucking luxury cruise. He can’t swim, and was panicked just being on the boat. He hates the sun. He will not sit in the sun, never mind sunbathe.' 

Spinetrak

1996's The Light User Syndrome was an overlong, uneven affair, but it does contain some of the most effective MES-Brix vocal combinations, such as 'He! Pep' and 'Hostile'. 'Spinetrak' is another, which also features one of her trademark surf-rock riffs. Both Brix and Simon Wolstencroft rated it as one of the best tracks on the album.

Bad News Girl

Whatever MES might have said about never writing about Brix, she was confident that this track from 1988's I Am Kurious Oranj was aimed at her: ‘this wasn’t some kind of riddle, he was putting our problems to the forefront. I knew it.’ Whether or not this was the case (and it’s hard not to think it was), it’s a notably bitter song: ‘jaded lust and tiresomeness are not what I want to look at… wet sex’ll keep you anaesthetised… goodbye my dear’. 

Glam Racket - Star

Originally recorded - in Brix's absence - for 1993's The Infotainment Scan, the Fall returned to the song on their 18th Peel session in 1994, Brix's first since 1988. This version included her 'Star' section, a not-even-thinly-disguised swipe at Smith’s egotism (possibly her retaliation for ‘Bad News Girl’): ‘You say that you're a star but I don't give a fuck / I watch your head expanding as you're running out of luck.’

The song featured regularly in 1994-95 gigs, a period when MES habitually wandered off stage for lengthy periods, leaving Brix to handle the vocals herself. Her delivery of the 'Star' section in these performances (for example this one from the Oxymoron compilation) often captured her frustration with his behaviour very clearly.

Elves

The Fall’s recorded history is littered with ‘borrowings’, some more obvious than others. 'Elves' is definitely at the ‘shameless steal’ end of the spectrum, its riff being lifted wholesale from The Stooges’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’. Brix – who did the lifting – claimed that it was a deliberate homage, meant to be a ‘witty commentary, a send-up of punk’. Steve Hanley suggests that his brother pointed out the similarity and Brix’s response was that she’d never heard the song. 

The Chiselers

Described by Simon Ford as The Fall's 'Bohemian Rhapsody', 'The Chiselers' (or 'Chilinist' or 'Chilinism') had a troubled recording history that resulted in a variety of versions that nobody in the group was entirely satisfied with. Brix's contributions were a strong feature in all of them, however, although she was even more prominent on the Peel session.

Bonkers In Phoenix

A Brix song called ‘Shiny Things’ that Smith mangled and embellished with a wide range of outlandishly garish sound effects that were apparently intended to capture the experience of attending a music festival. You can hear the original version on the 2006 reissue of the album, which confirms that it was – as Brix herself admitted – rather ‘girly and sickly’. 

Many thanks for reading and all your support. Next week I'll be looking at another important woman in The Fall's history, Eleni Poulou.

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