Latest Release
- 12 MAY 2023
- 4 Songs
- Hex Enduction Hour (Expanded Deluxe Edition) · 1982
- Extricate (Expanded Edition) · 1990
- This Nation's Saving Grace · 1985
- Live at the Witch Trials · 1979
- Hex Enduction Hour (Expanded Deluxe Edition) · 1982
- Live at the Witch Trials · 1979
- This Nation’s Saving Grace (Expanded Edition) · 2011
- The Real New Fall Formerly 'Country On The Click' · 2003
- I Am Kurious Oranj · 1988
- I Am Kurious Oranj · 1988
Essential Albums
- 2020
- 2020
- 2013
- 2010
- 2010
- 1988
Artist Playlists
- Post-punk icons who sought truth between insight and absurdity.
- How to channel Mark E. Smith's dry wit and furious scorn.
- A gentler side of post-punk's most scornful band.
- The garage rockers and proto-punks that made Mark E. Smith.
- 2023
More To Hear
- Tunes from Cage the Elephant, Kelela, The Fall and Knox Fortune.
About The Fall
The post-punk era was defined by rock bands expanding their horizons with non-rock influences, but for The Fall, the experimentation was as much verbal as musical. Upon forming in Manchester in 1976, The Fall were among the legion of cantankerous combos rising up in punk’s first wave, but the band’s frontman, Mark E. Smith, sounded less like a singer than a pirate-radio broadcaster narrating a never-ending documentary about England’s descent into dystopia. Early Fall records were a roiling mixture of rockabilly racket and primitive Krautrock, and by the time they released their first messterpiece, 1982’s Hex Enduction Hour, the group had already developed a reputation for revolving-door lineups that were as unsettled as their music. But with the addition of Smith’s American wife, Brix, in 1983, The Fall enjoyed a period of stability, brightening up their sound with synth accents, group-chant hooks and Kinks covers that landed them within striking distance of the UK Top 20 charts. After Brix’s departure in the mid-’90s (around the time savvy Britpop bands like Blur and Elastica were channelling The Fall’s irascible essence), the group underwent many more permutations, yet always retained their uncanny balance of caustic energy and cryptic commentary right up until Mark E. Smith’s death in 2018 at age 60.
- ORIGIN
- Manchester, England
- FORMED
- 1976
- GENRE
- Alternative