The muddle that is the Fall’s second LP must have come as a surprise to anyone following the band’s career closely at that point. The group released one of their strongest statements yet just four months earlier with their “Rowche Rumble” single. The songs were still sloppy and wobbly but you couldn’t deny that MES’s lyrics and the band’s playing had an impressive verve.

Dragnet, in comparison, feels like everything is crumbling apart as fast as they build it. The songs are playful and feel like they were constructed just a few minutes before the tape started rolling, but that doesn’t suit this version of The Fall one bit. The tension needed to hold these live wire elements of the band — particularly new guitarist Craig Scanlon and new bassist Steve Hanley — just isn’t there. It sure makes the moments of crystal clear cohesion — the moody, powerful “Before The Moon Falls,” the out-of-tune but joyous “Choc-Stock,” and the Bo Diddley shuffle of “Dice Man” — feel even more glaring.

MES, for his part, takes a post-modern tone on these songs, commenting on and delighting in the commercial disinterest in the band’s work to date. He seems happy to be free of the “wage packet jobs” weighing down average blokes, and even happier poking fun at the “weak TV” and “weaker tea” being fobbed off as British pop music. Looked at through that lens, perhaps the entire album is a big fuck off to the establishment. If you want us, England, you have to sift through our shitty guitar playing and lyrical references to Lovecraft and Ray Milland to find us.