Reviews

Marc Riley's 'Jumper' sounds as though he has never fully managed to escape the effects that being in the Fall had upon him. He wanders blankly down a blind alley of his own making, spouting surrealistic verses that were probably found in Mark E's dustbin and should have stayed there. I was disappointed.

On my third review of a Marc Riley record, I find it hard to say anything different about the man. Marc Riley used to be a vital part of The Fall, he left and now has a makeshift band; this is a record of their Peel sessions, all very Fall-like and convincing, yet at the same time so utterly limited in it's outlook. Does he expect to sell more than 1,000 copies?

In which deadpan doggerel, ostrich guitars, playtime organ, rubber band bass and dustbin drumming once more assert that here is some corner of Greater Manchester that is forever Velvet.

Or Jonathan Richman, or The Fall, or The Blue Orchids, or any sons-of-the Underground who've rearranged the rockin' idiom to coin a new jargon of guilefully primitive-seeming barbs against dumb conformity that masquerades as sharp pop style. Or something

Anyway, in this long-playing compilation of the vinyl-so-far, ex-Fall renegade Marc Riley and his motley crew of Creepers bash out mordant ditties that bounce with ride health and proudly proclaim the quintessential cool to be found only in stubborn unhipness. Thus we are treated to 'Favourite Sister', 'Baby Paints', 'Blow' and 'Location Bangladesh' - square-cornered, clattering mantrabillies with a fixed luddite sneer at the tinny pretensions of just about everything.

A spot-on attitude, I'd say, and as I'm told the soon forthcoming stuff dumps on pseudery from an even greater height, I can't wait to be underneath when it lands.

Mat Snow
NME

One of the more inspiring rumours about why Marc Riley left The Fall was that he'd incurred Mark Smith's displeasure when said Smith was not invited to the nuptuals of said Riley.

Absolute balderdash of course. Tittle-tattle for the sake of tittle-tattle. However it helps to interpret the works of Riley with reference to such local colour. What to make of something that sounds often Fall-ish but has no Smithian cynicism? How to reconcile Riley's good nature with a persistent gripeyness - the usual Fall tendencies towards acid-spun hieroglyphics - that is sometimes brilliant but more often baffling.

This 'stubborn and eclectic document', made in eighteen hours at a cost of 85 pounds, is endearing in its self-consciously shoddy moments, as well as its finest ones.

The epic Gross is a corking, if petulant critique of a 'real person': 'I always was an artistic fucker/ With mirrors and music I took her/ Bitch, she laughed when I took her.', these lines chanted alongside a droning organ and caterpillar drum beat.

Corking in a different way is 'Earwig o' Dowd', monologued by The Fall's Paul Hanley (Craig Scanlon and Steve Hanley are also featured here: they were, presumably, invited to the wedding). The backing is sheer Velvets, the lyrical content - about a neighbour who happens to be an earwig, of course - is schoolboyishly indulgent, not a criticism.

The record's mains fault is that parts sound too careless and casual, sarcasm is no substitute for being hard-hitting. The doodle-packed accompanying packaging adds to the profusion of uncool and of trumpery moonshine. Then why am I playing it so often?

Cath Carroll
NME, 11 August 1984

Keep on creeping on!

What a jolly noise merchant is Marc Riley! Whenever the opportunity arises, he and his Creepers are only too pleased to turn out a thunderous riff, a whirling organ, and a ditty of dervish-like tendencies. On 'Fancy Meeting God', he's done it again. Which is all right by me. Riley's records exude a sense of humour that sometimes revolves around things that perhaps only he can understand, and sometimes appeal to more common tastes, 'Everybody hates a traffic warden/ Even those without a car', he sings quite unjustifiably, and then goes on to merrily apply the same treatment to the likes of Jackie Charlton and Bob Monkhouse.

Riley's first single, 'Jumper Clown', had a title of singlular appropriateness. His peculiar talent, one which he shares with the Three Johns and many of that ilk, is the creation of the leaping maelstrom, a noisy wildness confined with a simple sketch of popness; he is a master of the catchy near-tune.

'Fany meeting God', while probably not suggesting any major advances in his abilities, does show that said abilities are probably infinite.

David Quantick
NME, 23 March 1985

What's it all about Riley? Is the man a genuinely wild and wacky guy, or is Marc guilty of indulging in studied eccentricity? The Creepers play conventionally structured songs, fairly competently performed, and yet the superficial polish is continually scratched away. The guitar on 'Judas Sheep' is so hopelessly out of tune, it has to be a deliberate ploy on Riley's part.

Crazy song titles hint at a best-forgotten past that refuses to lie down and the crazy insert is a direct descendent of Gong's 'Camembert Electrique' puerility. In taking the silly way out, Riley fails to make the most of what is basically very melodic material.

A driving, guitar-based instrumental,'Breakneck 1' opens proceedings, the northerner's distinctive regional intontation first appearing on the powerful 'we Don't Say'. Side One's trump card is 'Wanna Cocktail Hate Tale', the rattling drums of Eddie Fenn working overtime.

The accurate 'Marquee Moon' guitar refrain of 'Breakneck 2' introduces a marginally less effective second side. Like a school dinner, the best is left till last, the drumless, piano-led 'Fly In The Nest' bringing out the finest in a man who clearly has pretensions - and the ability - to establish a reputation as a songwriter.

Andy Hurt
Sounds

Marc Riley and the Creepers walk back into the limelight with their new L.P. 'Fancy Meeting God!' on In Tape. It was recorded and mixed over a pretty economical three day period in February - this is a quick turnaround record label we are talking about here. And tracks in question are smash and grab material too - there are plenty of artistes around at the moment who yearningly bandy words like 'terrorism' in comparison to their own music, but only MRWTC can get away with the boastful sentiments of 'We Don't Say' or 'Breakneck 2' on this new release. It you want a theme for this album, I think it's all in the drum sound - every song is built around the varying tempos of what sounds like a wooden packing case being hit with sticks in a large echoey room - all terror in the music arises from this, culminating in 'Wanna Cocktail Hate Tale', an all-embracing piece of wrath which ends the first side. The dry humour of our Marc and Co. is the ideal foil for musical bloodletting - Jokes -they've got a million of 'em, but it's your morbid Northern music hall humour: 'Ever heard of Peter Townshend he can make his guitar broke/I don't give a fig for him, I can make my guitar choke.'

City Life (Number 29), 29 March 1985

Not sure about four, but the two tracks on side one, half of their last Peel session, make it. Riley's souped up contusions sometimes suffer from lumpy textures and a lack of colour, but give him a sacred cow to snipe at and the sparks really fly. 'The Bard of Woking' is one such, slagging off pop's principled Paulie is a bit like Class War having a go at Joan Ruddock - a genuinely reasonable and conscientious figure makes an easy and fairly irresistible target. An acid hurricane blows and the daggers hit a few soft spots. I like it.

Marc Riley's peculiar brand of dishevelled pop makes for interesting listening. Included here are four throbbing tracks direct from a Maida Vale Peel session. Poppy power punk at its most rhythmical.

My early affections for this group have not blossomed with successive releases; this strident chainsaw flurry through the old Brian Eno song is a longime stage favourite, but not one to encourage past allegiances.

'Murdered by some Indie band in the early '80s I seem to remember'
Marc Riley himself, after playing Brian Eno's Baby's on Fire on Rocket Science, 6 Music (5 March 2005)

This latest exorcism of pivotal Creeper Marc Riley's contorted pop demon is an unsettling experience. It's a bit like overhearing an in-joke, and not being sure if it's about you.

Riley covers a lot of ground here. Scratchy and niggling, it digs about in the 'weird sinners' corner of white pop, and drags out bits of the Fall, bits of Beefheart and bits of pretty much any awkward bugger you could think of.

In one of those wirey, hectoring voices that gets stuck under your fingernails, Riley leads us on a wrapped journey through chunky jolt hops 'Chocolate Box', foetal heavy metal 'Stroke of Genius', and twisted folkiness 'Honest Lies'. His eerie version of Eno's 'Baby's on Fire' is quite brilliant. Top quality, vindictive absurdity, for those with a stomach for queasy listening. (4/5)

Roger Morton
NME

In the third song on the second side of this, the Creepers' third studio album, Marc Riley tells us, 'I've been a free man for three years now'. Are these the three years that have elapsed since he ducked out of Mark E Smith's dragnet dictatorship? Is this an autobiographical statement at all? Well, who knows because, although Riley has souped up his spiky, Tesco guitar sound to produce an offbeat riff selection that's far more sophisticated than that of Riley-period Fall, he maintains a lyrical impenetrability worthy of the Marquis himself.

From the opening 'the adventures of Brian glider' with it's ' warning to Mrs Glider about the man who's going to end up inside her', 'Miserable Sinners' is a winning collection of cautionary tales, deadpan dismissals and dark-edged character sketches that shroud themselves with their idiosyncratic storylines yet still thro out enough clues to keep you listening.

Nine new Creepers compositions (including 'Glider' and 'Stroke of Genius', from a Peel session) are added to the perfunctory cover of Eno's 'Baby's On Fire'. They make up a volume of short stories all of which, bar one, unfold over the churning density of chords and jerky breaks of Riley and fellow guitarist Mark Tilton.

'Sound As A Pound' is apparently an effective blank-faced self-appraisal: 'I know I'm not Captain Beefheart or Groucho Marx/ But I place myself above the mainstream, up with the sparks'. Then again, it could just as easily be a put-down on his left-field peers - such is the murkiness of intention that Riley benefits from.

Other high points are 'Old Man's Treat', which carries a tale of old age and seedy desperation over a clanking piano figure, and 'Another Song About Motorbikes' with its monologue on the cycleboy psyche.

Roy Wilkinson
Sounds

I've always been particularly fond of liquorice, especially those penny strips of strawberry bootlaces, something to chew while pondering on the fate of old popstars and rock 'n' roll ... Marc Riley prefers the variety of ye olde Bassetts Allsorts: a selection as varied as Toni Basil's 'Hey Mickie' (the song our dog first wagged its tail to), to Tom Waits' "You don't have to listen to swordfish trombone but god knows it helps". But as he says later "You can lead me to water but you can't make me drink" - This IS the philosophy for the first two listens to the LP - you need a drip to survive, by the third the obtuse dry Northern wit has pierced your skin and you learn to appreciate the candy selection.

The sense of humour is the only real factor left to create comparisons with Mark E Smith, though 'Fan Club' has that early Fall singing through a transistor radio effect. ''Cept for You' has shades of Las Vegas Gun Club and 'Act Your Age' sees shrivelled punks tooting the firing line "to the dancefloor of the Sham 69 comeback tour, now that makes me smile to watch a lost cause and Jim takes a bow to the sound of applause". The lyric to 'Derbyshire' should be printed on the back of every Allsort pack, it's just arrrghhh ... Brill. 'Rock 'N' Roll Liquorice Flavour' is the most accessible and streamlined of The Creepers work - it's my favourite, what's yours? (9)

Helen Mead
NME

Jon Langford scores another mini-masterpiece production for overseeing this, ex-Fall man Marc Riley's, new collection. A tickled, not tortured artist, Riley keeps all his usual sarcastic references and black humours rubbing shoulders throughout. But it's the rocking sassiness and clipped brilliance of tunes like 'Cheshire Life' and 'Liquorice Flavour' that really impresses. Applied intelligence and native wit are keeping the Creepers bowling along splendidly.

And note, nearly every tune here pulls rank on Mark E Smith's 'Hit The North'! (4/5)

Pete Paisley
Record Mirror, 21 November 1987

What a disaster. Annoying, very irritating drum machine and two vocals. These records really annoy me. Terminally Ill Mix? It's a bit like how I feel.