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Jul 14, 2015If you listen to this album a lot, you may spend the first two or three times through snorting at odd phrases, recoiling from the venom and viscosity in Smith’s vocal delivery, but as you go, you begin to pick up the ferocity of the grooves underneath. No one else balances articulate, convincing hallucination with freight train propulsion like the Fall does, and this album, they take it further towards the edge than before.
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Jun 9, 2015A satisfying land where they receive all the drive, the snarl, and tribal drums they require, while late album highlights "Quit iPhone" and "Fibre Book Troll" (which is really "Facebook Troll") are screaming examples of the band's rockabilly-punk in overdrive.
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MojoMay 20, 2015It's mighty good. [Jun 2015, p.93]
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May 19, 2015In terms of coherence, it’s quite possibly their best LP since Imperial Wax Solvent.
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UncutMay 28, 2015The definitive post-millennium Fall album remains 2008's Imperial Wax Solvent, but this is a credibly bitter pill to swallow. [Jul 2015, p.75]
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May 28, 2015Pledge is also somewhat uninspired, as MES sets his sights on crowdsourcing and the band scampers around aimlessly. These moments aside, Sub-Lingual Tablet is this incarnation of The Fall’s most impressive addition to the band’s canon.
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May 19, 2015Thankfully there’s enough genuinely high quality Fall material here to ensure that any newcomers to the band are fairly sure to move directly from ‘Quit iPhone’ to ‘Frightened’, ‘The Classical’, ‘New Big Prinz’ or another classic Fall album opener.
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Jun 22, 2015There’s nothing wrong with anything on Tablet, simply that Smith has been doing the same thing for so long that one starts to wonder what he might be able to do if he set his sights a little higher.
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Jun 8, 2015In spite of their surprising stability, this iteration of the Fall is strangely lacking in audible camaraderie, and on Sub-Lingual Tablet, the distance between frontman and backing band feels more pronounced than ever.
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Jun 4, 2015Another adequate but inessential album.
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May 26, 2015Smith’s voice admittedly sounds ravaged on the cranky Quit iPhone and the otherwise boisterous Stout Man, but at least he’s fully engaged throughout.
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May 26, 2015In many ways Sub-Lingual Tablet is, like any Fall album will be, a stranger and superior record than most released in any given year. But by The Fall's own standards, this time that's just not good enough.
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Q MagazineMay 19, 2015Sub-Lingual Tablet is occasionally lumpen, frequently marred by Smith's recently adopted growl yet powered by enough energy and spark to burn through any reservations. [Jun 2015, p.105]
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May 19, 2015What seems to be album No 31 certainly has its share of Fall-by-numbers, in which the bass grinds on, keyboards trace spindly patterns, and Smith grumbles in one of his incomprehensible and terrifying voices--Pledge and Black Door certainly fit that description. But there are surprises, too.
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The WireJun 5, 2015The atmosphere is underwrought, miserable, monochrome. [Jun 2015, p.46]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 11 out of 13
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Mixed: 1 out of 13
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Negative: 1 out of 13
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Jun 19, 2015
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Jun 17, 2015