File Under Uneasy Listening. No doubt if Mark Edward Smith was still alive (he died in 2018) The Fall would still be churning out albums at a rate of knots. Roughly one a year since the band’s inception in 1976. 42 years, 32 studio albums (many many more EPs, live LPs, comps and others) and over 60 musicians passing through The Fall turnstiles is not so much ‘prolific’ as indecently voracious. This compilation album appears to have two subtitles: 39 Golden Greats and The Very Best Of The Fall 1978-2003 which together provide a pretty good description of its contents. If you’d been living under a rock during those years, and not heard of The Fall, then it still can’t possibly prepare you for what the music actually sounds like. Both loved and lambasted as a rowdier, rougher-round-the-edges version of The Smiths during the early 80s, this cheap comparison was massively incorrect. Most likely come up with by London-based music journalists who equated any band from Manchester as hewn from the same stone. I’m not sure how you’d describe their music. Genre-wise: post-punk, alternative, indie, all the usual meaningless labels. But in practice: rough jangling jarring guitars, frenetic drumming (often with two drummers), ‘songs’ which lurch seemingly indiscriminately from verse to chorus like some dazed drunk at the end of the night, and then Smith’s vocals over the top. Not so much ‘singing’ as ranting whatever thoughts were on his shopping list of ‘things to complain about’ that day. It’s hard to imagine that many of these songs were ‘hits’, in fact many performed highly on the UK Indie Charts (does that still exist?) and many more are a soundtrack to the grey grimness of the early 80s: Industrial Estate, Totally Wired, Eat Y’self Fitter. FOR FULL REVIEW & PLAYLIST CLICK LINK IN BIO #thefall #markesmith #totallywired #eatyselffitter #hitthenorth #proleartthreat #indiemusic #manchesterbands #compilationalbum #postpunk #recordcollection #nowlistening #nowplaying #randomrecordreview https://www.instagram.com/p/CFkENxVp8iF/?igshid=lqidksqddz6u