As if to reassure fans that their dalliances with electro-pop were behind them, the Fall open their 1994 album with a smattering of “Groovy Train”-style nonsense that quickly fades away and is replaced by a hip-swinging bit of pop that befits the band much more comfortably. If anything, it sounds like the band trying to reclaim some of their prior power. Dave Bush takes a tertiary role in the songwriting, adding color and texture to the album and ceding the reins to Steve Hanley and Craig Scanlon, who co-wrote all the original songs on here. The result is the band’s best album in at least five years, an engaging collection that looks back to their past (the vicious “Hey! Student” could slip into the track list of Perverted By Language unnoticed) and comfortable embrace of their particular present (the chiming, playful, modern “You’re Not Up To Much” and “Behind The Counter”). Like the best of the Fall’s post-1990 work, the songs work best when they play with the tension between the sheer catchiness of the music and MES’s most acidic lyrics. His crankiness, as ever, toes the border of being endearing and annoying. We can delight in his jibes at the younger generation, his surely ironic relationship advice (“You gotta be cheerful-hearted/There’s at least 15 ways to leave your man”), and his efforts to speak on behalf of his frustrated bandmates that have to accept getting a fancy bottle of wine in exchange for putting up with MES’s bullshit. Though we know now just how awful a tradeoff that eventually wound up being for everyone in the group, for an album like this, it seemed worth it.