Before The Fall - 24 Prelapsarian Cuts!

Amid the kerfuffle about how Mark E Smith is a lyrical genius-uh, the final visionary, this nation's engraved face, etc, it's often forgotten that The Fall's founding father is a music fanatic. His taste in covers says as much: all manner of delights are forced through his band's peppery grinder.

This two-dozen-strong collection of originals to his remakes was probably a nightmare to sequence, it's such a mixture. But the fact it works is testimony to Smith's taste as well as compiler Daniel Maier's diligence. The musical moods lurch like a drunk in an earthquake. Hence Lee Perry's menacing rocksteady ramble Kimble (credited to The Creators) jostles Sister Sledge's disco classic Lost In Music; The Saints' This Perfect Day nuzzles Leadbelly's The Bourgeois Blues. More likely candidates for a Fall from grace include Hank Mizell's Jungle Rock, R Dean Taylor's There's A Ghost In My House (more famous as a cover now), and Beefheart's Beatle Bones'n'Smokin' Stones. Above all else it's fun and a "Fall" album for those who find them hard to stomach.