Given their Fall-esque name and, indeed, credentials (famously, Mark E Smith is a fan) it’s difficult to prise I Ludicrous from the shadows of the Salford bard. Smith’s interest was garnered by one simple fact: emerging in the mid-80s, I Ludicrous were a duo courageous enough to trust the quirks of their own intuition. As such, much of this 34-song compilation doesn’t sound like The Fall at all.
It all began with the flexi-disc Preposterous Tales, included here, which crawled to No 11 in John Peel’s 1987 Festive 50. Their 1992 album, Idiots Savants!, even teased the latent journalist out of Smith, who interviewed the band for the NME.
I Ludicrous employ a refreshing wit, as indicated by the sing titles: Moynihan Brings Out The Hooligan In Me, Three English Football Grounds and Stuck In A Lift With Noel Edmonds. The central song provides for the key: football fans who glimpsed the surrealism of Saturday afternoons long before the game was infiltrated by intelligentsia. This is the core of their work: a bright lyrical vision married to a rock base that threatens to break free on almost every song. Endlessly intriguing, if slightly over-long, it’s 20 years of rolling hilariously around the bottom of the barrel.
