Clocking in at Number 24 on the Phantom Fifty, I couldn’t understand how this track hadn’t secured a similar placing on the mainstream UK singles chart in late 1990/early 1991, given how terrific it was. Granted, it’s not the smoothest production in the world, falling three quarters of the way towards Hit the North, but it’s tight as a drum, catchy as hell and features Mark E. Smith’s ruminations on both the march of technology into people’s lives and the first stirrings of the property bubble, a phenomenon which led to our current cultural hellscape where seemingly every second television programme is either about converting properties or moving to new ones. High Tension Line is so good, I rate it as that rarest of beasts, at least to my ears, the repeatable Fall song. I could listen to it on a loop 4 or 5 times, I reckon.
It should have been a nailed on Top 40 hit at least, but it got nowhere near the charts. I suspect that its prospects were harmed by the dickish decision that the band made to film a video for the song in which they sat around in SS uniforms while ripping up magazines and newspapers. Book burning on a Woolworths budget was never likely to tickle the interest of Top of the Pops or The Chart Show. Smith attempted to brush off the controversy at the time, by claiming that the Fall were taking the piss out of “controversial” bands who played it safe. Remember, children, being a Northern contrarian means never having to admit when you’ve acted like a twat. Ultimately, a distracted record buying public and poor decision making meant that a splendid song fell down the cracks. It wasn’t even featured on the vinyl version of the Shift-Work album. Instead, if you had missed the single release, you had to buy the CD or cassette versions.
For more information on High Tension Line, including the avant-garde classical piece that inspired its title, I can only direct you to the recently deleted Annotated Fall website and hope, along with every other blogger out there, that The Internet Archive continues to hold that most precious of content safe.
Video courtesy of The Fall
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