Instant Replay - Pick of the Week: The Fall, "Dr. Bucks' Letter"

The massively distorted, percussive loops that cycles throughout this bizarre, wonderful song might come from floor toms and a digitally-meddled-with bass guitar, but who the hell knows: it's pure Fall. It repeats and repeats until your brain has no choice and accepts the crunching noise as catchy. I have no idea if the band (or whatever incarnation of it that was responsible for it) ever performed the thing live.

The song builds an entire atmosphere from those loops: restrained rimshot percussion appears in and out of the mix, and a lot of atonal bubbly synth noise coats the edges of the sound, turning around and around in different places. Every so often a twangy, C/W guitar line pops up out of nowhere, adding what initially sounds like a nearly unrelated melody. And occasionally, everything cuts out except for a heavily treated guitar that hacks away at an unplayable, digitally-mutilated chord.

Over this constantly shifting and rather cold, forbidding soundscape, an ancient-sounding Mark E. Smith resignedly grumbles his way through what sounds like an incomprehensible list of different peeves, regrets, in-jokes, and digs at other people - including the last part of the song, where he pokes gentle fun at British radio DJ Pete Tong. No one meaning comes out of the song - like nearly all Fall lyrics, it's all too fragmented to convey one thing - but in the first part Smith regrets alienating a friend ("mocked him and treated him...with rudeness") and by the end of the song has talked about putting a radio on, reading a magazine, and at random, mentions Dr. Bucks' letter. It's just there. That's all.

I won't hear a catchier song all week.