Couples vs Jobless Mid 30s

(1)

Relevant in your later snap stairs...
Jet lag...
At his come down
Composite set year
The green jelly
Green jelly envy  (2)

No, nevermore (3)
Gargoyle legs
Are droopy
C quality
Next, they jet
Upwardly B.T. rancid
Laughter

His grin is elf
Makes 10 copies
To his mother spouse
She tortures him in big house
Don't forget that
Birthday
Look at me, kids
Is irrelevant to your latent sex
and shock your lizard

(Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho) (4)

And your lookalikey tears is relevant in your
His grin is elf
Makes 10 copies
His blonde mother spouse
Tortures him in his big house

Get rid, you need more sackings
Order up his toast
His grin is elf
Advertising
And makes 10 copies
His blonde mother spouse
Tortures him, in big house
Says we need more seconds
(Eagles of Death Metal)  (5)
His grin is elf
Aids joke
CD Antipodian, upside down
Percussionist rests
Grin is elf
Percussionist retched
She yells, at every morn,
(message:) Get a job!

Dreaming
The dream: gargoyles and drummers, awkwardly descend to great terror
Get a job  (6)

Waiting

He walks down in every town
He's a nice man to have around,
He implodes on shelf, with someone else,
He's elf 
But just watch him
He is
He's raised elf on shelf (7)

Compulsive on the side
Like the 15 marrows
The ja volks
With Gene Kelly
Say through the clotted breath
How the clouds of synthetic
And overpriced Herr Burgoman

Couples vs. must stay jobless
King of couples and closures
Must stay jobless
King of closures,
Couples vs. jobless

Couple 30-ish

vs. jobless

(8)
 

1.  MES, in an interview published in the September 2017 issue of Uncut magazine (from Dan, quoted from p.56):
 

The centrepiece of New Facts... is the nine-minute “Couples Vs Jobless Mid-30s,” an unhinged multi-part suite that veers from lumbering rock grooves complete with manic laughter to sections of chanting and detuned Mellotron. “We went to a studio in Castleford, Yorkshire,” says Smith, explaining the song’s creation, “which funnily enough is where we did Your Future Our Clutter. It’s a big, fuck-off heavy metal studio. I left them in there for a week or so.”

You just left the group there and went away? 

"No, not off on holiday! Stuff like 'Couples...,' that’s them having fun. So we got about seven songs out of it [at Castleford]. 'Couples...' is like three or four of their tunes savaged! They were trying to do something about Eagles Of Death Metal, and about heavy metal groups. I said, “That’s not on”, because they were the group in Paris, weren’t they? So I changed it to all this. I enjoy it...."

And also from Dan:

From "The Fall: album by album", in Uncut magazine, July 2019:
 

KEIRON MELLING: ... We started "Couples Vs Jobless" in a hotel room and recorded it with the whole band going through a guitar amp, and the vocals on a dictaphone.

Eagles of Death Metal are mentioned in the backing vocals (see note 5, and the Mojo quote below). On November 13, 2015 90 fans were killed in a terorrist bombing at an Eagles of Death Metal concert in Paris at the Bataclan theatre. This is interesting insofar as it seems to imply the band would have had input into the lyrics or subject matter of a song they were writing...

"Victoria Train Station Massacre" unfortunately reminded people of another bombing, as Clash magazine wrote that it "eerily echoes the suicide bombing in Manchester last week [5/22/2017, at an Ariana Grande concert at nearby Manchester Arena]." In this case, MES did not change the title due to the (perceived, somewhat tenuous) connection, insisting that the song was written prior to the events in question.

Also from Dan, Pete Greenway, quoted p.57 of the same Uncut feature:
 

“Couples Vs Jobless Mid-30s” was conceived in a hotel room. Mark came up with the idea to do this long, operatic thing with chanting, and we took him at his word and did it. A very odd song.

And, from Mojo all the way back in September, 2016:

[Lyric writing] goes round in cycles...if I put down what I've got now, it'll make Slates look monosyllabic. I might go that way--ffuuvkkgrrrraaaaaghhhh! Like a fucking word for every beat. It's coming. I mean, the last LP there are more lyrics aren't there, even if they are repetitive. It's, er, there'll be four times more lyrics on the next LP. I think it should have a few extra lines 'cos the music's harder and better. What do you think about the title, Couple, Mid-30s Vs. Jobless? That's a fucking great title! This fucking woman is shouting at her young son who owns a factory. And in the middle the [band] sing, "Eagles of Death Metal." That's their idea; they're nutters aren't they? Anyway, I'm giving my ideas away.

From "The Fall: album by album", in Uncut magazine, July 2019:
 

KEIRON MELLING: ... We started "Couples Vs Jobless" in a hotel room and recorded it with the whole band going through a guitar amp, and the vocals on a dictaphone.

^

2. TheorySwine on the Fall online forum:

Here's what I think the green jelly reference in Couples... might allude to. 

(i) - Smith is reminding us of the faux-metal 3 Little Pigs by Green Jelly of some years back, a tune that was a deliberate pastiche and maybe the style MES was aiming for in his musical homage to that song. So, a piss-take of a piss-take, and nothing more.

(ii) - He's commenting on his medical ailment. Perhaps he excreted some green jellyish substance from some orifice. I'm not taking the mickey - I once coughed up a phlegm-ball of perfect circular proportions and repulsive texture/appearance/size that it had me straight down the doctor's. I can only speculate that maybe he has passed something he'd rather not have.

(iii) - He had some nice green jelly for pudding.

Scarfulous suggests it could be a reference to the British show Fists of Fun, on which a character is obsessed with green jelly.

^

3. It's hard to hear this word in a lyric without thinking of Poe's "The Raven." It's hard to go any further with this thought, however.

Leon also reminds us of "Elves":

No never, no never no more
will I trust the elves of Dunsimore

^

4. The backing vocals here seem to quote "Heigh Ho," from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (thanks be to gizmoman).

^

5. Eagles of Death Metal are an American rock band (see note 1). These two passages in the backing vocals appear in condensed form in the lyrics of "Fol de Rol" as "Heigh Ho metal!"

^

6. A couple of people in the comments mentioned a resonance with "Get a Job" by the Silhouettes. 

^

7. This may well be a reference to what Ted calls "the recent obnoxious Christmas tradition of having a stuffed elf on a shelf somewhere in the house to essentially report back to Santa on who's been naughty or nice. Based on a 2005 kids book, you could see it as a way to introduce the young'uns to a surveillance society.

^

8. Tempertantrum on the Fall online forum suggests that the last few seconds are a quote of the beginning of "Decades" by Joy Division. It seems possible this is a coincidence.

^

Couples vs Jobless Mid 30s: Fall Tracks A-Z