“If it’s me and your granny on bongos, then it’s a Fall gig,” Mark E. Smith once declared. Logically, then, if an album features Smith’s inimitable droning vocals then it’s a Fall album, regardless of who is employed to provide the musical backing.

No matter how often he’s written off, Smith keeps bouncing back. The death of John Peel, his most important patron, in 2004 proved a springboard. A long-overdue collected set of all 24 Peel sessions appeared. His 2005 record, Fall Heads Roll , came up to expectations, while a BBC documentary last year offered another chance for viewers to celebrate the fact that they are not Mark Smith.

As his 50th birthday approaches next month (he looks older, mind), the release of his 26th studio album (plus a seemingly infinite number of live sets, three due this month alone) ought to offer a chance to appraise his influence.

Inevitably, the great contrarian offers instead a patchy collection, avoiding an increasingly comfortable niche. No wonder Smith has so rarely been troubled by chart success — I once met someone who, looking for a Manchester starter home, found themselves being shown round a nondescript semi by Smith, who was looking to sell. No millions, then.

There are some fine moments, though. The title track itself, Reformation , a long and pointed attack on old hands who get the old band back together again, is terrific. Smith yelps incoherently over a gloomy repeated riff, yet the effect is strangely effortless.

A resigned version of White Line Fever , Merle Haggard’s ode to pointless living, is perfectly appropriate to a man nearer the end of his journey than the start. And the brief Coach and Horses (not coincidentally the name of a Prestwich hostelry he has been known to frequent) slopes along slickly, vaguely reminiscent of the Velvet Underground’s smoother moments.

Less enticing are the drab jam of Das Boat — ten minutes of undersea noises — and The Wright Stuff , on which Smith’s wife, the keyboardist Elena Poulou, takes a lead vocal to unmemorable effect. The Bad Stuff actually sounds like the Stranglers, and of those present surely only Smith remembers them.

But this record is unmistakably the work of the Fall. During last year’s US tour his entire band of young Englishmen fled for home after falling out with the boss. Smith simply enlisted the American support act, renamed them and carried on. James Brown would have been proud.

The musicians featured here, borrowed from the American bands Darker My Love and the Hill, give us the “Fall Sound”, that rumbling, vaguely rockabilly stomp that gives the admitted nonmusician Smith the room to, er, weave his verbal magic.

Thirty years into his career, Smith remains unique among his generation. Irascible as Van Morrison, playful as George Clinton, without even playing an instrument he created a style that players worldwide can lock into (it must be said too that the current bunch is extremely deft).

As a stand-alone Fall album this is nothing special, but it contributes to an ongoing story. It gets harder to imagine a world without him.

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