'I'm a fifty year old man and I like it,' Mark E. Smith snarls in the more than eleven minutes clocking 50 Year Old Man. Even the punks of yesteryear are getting a day older (who would have ever thought that?), Like Smith, who was allowed to blow out fifty candles on his birthday cake in 2007. Thirty years earlier he started The Fall and slowly grew into a British personality with his own and always
… obstinate opinion about anything and everything. He also continued to kick verbally and musically with The Fall. Imperial Wax Solvent bears witness to this as a rattling mishmash of punk, kid songs, collage-like music pieces and radio play-like interludes. The leading role is played by Smith, who as of old orates and snorts like the drunken, balding fox who has not yet forgotten anything about his tricks. Smith (next to girlfriend Eleni Poulou the only permanent fixture in The Fall) is more productive than ever and his albums are rarely disappointing. However, they no longer surprise. (MR)more
