Formed in Manchester in 1976, The Fall — with vocalist and founder Mark E. Smith at the helm — is the most inscrutable of post-punk bands. Experimental and enigmatic, The Fall released 31 studio albums from 1979 to 2017, a significant number of live albums, and many beloved John Peel sessions (24, a record number). Peel himself once cited The Fall as his favorite band, as do many in the British press. But all recordings by them are decidedly uncommercial, and Smith was forever proud for it to be that way.
Born in 1957, Smith had a normal childhood, but always felt like the outsider. At sixteen, he quit school and worked menial jobs — something he may even have become accustomed to had it not been for the summer of 1976 and seeing the Sex Pistols show at the Lesser Free Trade Hall. Members of Joy Division / New Order, the Smiths, Magazine, and The Buzzcocks were there, too. Each was inspired that night to eschew the pop music of the time and pick up instruments that most couldn’t even play. Each inarguably original. And Smith — who told Dave Haslam he already had begun his music career in 1975 — from thenceforward took the DIY aesthetic of the Pistols and made something uniquely his own. Unique, even, among his post-punk contemporaries.
Forever the contrarian, Smith — in the 42 years of the band’s existence (with rotating members) — never really had a hit, nor did he want one, really. THE INFOTAINMENT SCAM (1993) reached the UK Top Ten, but it was their only album to achieve this degree of success. Covers of R. Dean Taylor’s “There’s a Ghost in My House” and The Kinks’ “Victoria” charted in the UK in 1987 and 1988, respectively, but among their original material, only “Cruiser’s Creek” — from 1985’s excellent THIS NATION’S SAVING GRACE (where the song was an unreleased b-side until 1988) — broke through to the public at large, becoming a minor classic of what post-punk had become by the middle to late nineteen eighties. Their most heard song? “Hip Priest,” used in the final scenes of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) is played by serial killer Buffalo Bill on an unseen stereo while FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) walks a dark basement, gun drawn. It’s a moment many have seen, but few have really listened to. It’s an uncomfortable moment, and the music is similarly disorienting. Hardly accessible. And hypnotic.
I AM KURIOUS ORANJ (1998) is perhaps their most approachable album. Intended as the soundtrack for the ballet “I Am Curious, Orange,” a collaboration with the dancer Michael Clark, ORANJ was The Fall’s eleventh studio album.
ORANJ was also the last to include then-at-the-time wife Brix Smith, whose songwriting skills were strong — even as her marriage to Mark was weakening. The guitar riff in “Cruiser’s Creek” wer hers, as are many memorable songs on I AM KURIOUS ORANJ. But the lack of her presence on 1990’s EXTRICATE (also deemed accessible by critics) is apparent. Still, the proverbial show went on for The Fall for almost another two decades. Mark E. Smith didn’t seem to skip a beat.
“One of the most intelligent blokes [to walk] the planet,” said Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch in a 1999 issue of UNCUT magazine, Smith’s voice (often heard through a megaphone or cassette recorder which he often brought on stage) may have been caustic — and the music described by those who hate it as repetitive. But it was never boring, and often hypnotic. Smith’s lyrics, though sometimes buried in the mix and occasionally unintelligable, were at times biting, even beautiful.
After his death in 2018 at age 60, the British press and world at large briefly sang his praises, something Smith himself would have hated. He didn’t look for praise. His band didn’t sound like anyone else. And his attitude toward music was as mordant as the man.
In an unreleased documentary, Smith said
“It’s rock and roll. It’s all about the abuse of instruments, not playing instruments. That’s why music is so boring [now]. Every record you hear is so well-produced, and the blokes playing it have the imagination of a flea.”
By being so creative, innovative, and on the fringe for so many years, The Fall was able to help other bands that followed them find the elusive middle between experimentation AND commercialism. It’s a palpable dichotomy. And one need only listen to The Fall’s later albums, like I AM KURIOUS ORANJ, to even begin to hear and try to understand how that convergence and split makes for quite memorable music.