As you’ve likely picked up over the course of this list, the Fall are a test case for how much the sound and shape of a band’s music can change with the addition and removal of a person from the group. With Extricate, it was pretty glaring, as it was the first album recorded following the divorce of MES and Brix. The echoes of her influence are audible throughout, but the agitated quality she brought to even their poppiest singles has definitely been excised. The remaining band members — and returning champion Martin Bramah, the guitarist who originally left after the release of Witch Trials — gamely try to keep up appearances with some itchy trigger-finger guitar pop, pasty-faced funk, and a light country shuffle. That live wire that someone like Brix or Marc Riley could inject into the proceedings was sorely needed to tie all this together. It also didn’t help that MES apparently decided to go minimalist. This might have the fewest lyrics of any Fall album, and without his toothsome antics, there’s precious little to glom onto. On the other hand, Extricate also features his most emotionally affecting song, “Bill Is Dead,” a lightly played ballad that MES pours his romantic side into (“Just lately seeing you…I am renewed/I am aglow…these are the greatest times of my life”). Considering his romantic stresses of the time, it’s probably necessary to read those with a tinge of irony, but hearing him play the Romeo for at least one song offered a nice counter to his otherwise curmudgeonly spirit.