• Here’s Your Chance to be Mark E Smith for a Night

    August 20, 2019 - By 

    Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a member of The Fall? Well, wonder no more. This Saturday, August 24 at Dublin’s Sound House – thanks to one of our favourite promoters in the land, Enthusiastic Eunuch – the opportunity to channel your inner Mark E Smith has arisen, with backing music provided by The Fallen Women, an all-female Fall karaoke band working in association with The Quietus magazine. They’ll play the songs and members of the audience will be invited to sing them. Formed in order to celebrate Mark E Smith’s 60th birthday, they’ve played sold-out shows across the…

  • Dublin Set For Rebellious Jukebox YEAH! – A Celebration of The Fall

    March 27, 2018 - By 

    On Saturday, April 21, Dublin’s The Grand Social will play host to Rebellious Jukebox YEAH! – A Celebration of The Fall. Set to take place almost three months on from the passing of the late, great Mark E Smith, the event will feature live music from the likes of The 202s, Afterwardness, Niall Colfer, Dez Foley, Oranges, Richer Than Astronauts, Soft on Crime, Twinkranes and more to be announced, as well as video, spoken word/poetry and DJs. This has essential attendance written all over it. Tickets are priced €10 and are on sale now.

  • The Fall – New Facts Emerge

    July 28, 2017 - By 

    Constant line-up changes are part and parcel of The Fall, to the point where Guardian journalist Dave Simpson almost drove himself mad trying to track down every ex-member for his book The Fallen. And yet, in the last decade they’ve been strangely stable, releasing an unprecedented four albums with an entirely unchanged line-up, and a fifth that merely added a second percussionist. Now, though, not only are they back to a single drummer, but they’ve also lost Elena Poulou, who’d been manning the keyboards since as far back as 2002, making her one of the band’s longest serving members ever,…

  • Stream: Autumns – The Fall

    January 12, 2016 - By 

    As many of you will know by now, Derry’s Christian Donaghey AKA Autumns isn’t exactly in the business of snappy middle 8s and earworming refrains. Delving further into more experimental and decidedly murkier territory than before, his new track ‘The Fall’ summons the ghost of impoverished Düsseldorf winters and squalid cold water flats, bug-infested floorboards, insurmountable overdue rent and Suicide soundtracking the End on some barely musical engine of ruin. Donaghey said, “Lately I’ve been incredibly inspired and obsessed with transgressive authors and philosophers. This track is influenced just as much by the literature I’m reading than the dark industrial, electronic sound that I hear in my…

  • The Fall – Sub-Lingual Tablet

    May 20, 2015 - By 

    Only a fool writes off The Fall, a band that have had more returns to form than most bands have had records. With the current lineup now being their longest serving as a complete unit (aside from the recent addition of second drummer Daren Garratt), some have accused them of getting too comfortable and being in need of another shake-up like the days of old, since 2011’s sloppy Ersatz GB, a surprising misstep after the back-to-back excellence of Imperial Wax Solvent and Your Future Our Clutter before it. 2013’s Re-Mit then failed to fully compensate, being a mish-mash of greatness…

  • Smolder and Scully: The Fall Review

    November 18, 2014 - By 

    Your mum’s favourite serial killer is back. At the end of last year’s five-episode run of BBC2’s The Fall, Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) packed in his moonlighting strangling escapades and carted his family onto the next Stenna Line to the Highlands. But you can’t keep a good stalker down, especially when he’s one half of the BBC’s most locally successful and internationally exportable drama for years. In last week’s sophomore opener, he’s back to eyeing up brunettes on the Larne line. In the meantime, creator Allan Cubbit has had to defend the show against claims that it glamourizes female violence,…

  • The Fall – 5 Albums

    September 4, 2013 - By 

    A story less visited than the personnel changes of The Fall is that of the myriad labels they have called home over the years. Despite Mark E Smith’s aversion to nostalgia, many fans would no doubt look back at the 5 years they spent in the care of Beggars Banquet with fond regard. Coinciding with (Smith’s first wife) Brix’s tenure in the group, 1984-89 marked (amongst other things) their unlikely flirtation with mainstream success – with a few proper singles actually making the actual proper charts. This 5 CD box set is perhaps optimum illustration of why that success was…

  • The Fall – Re-mit

    May 3, 2013 - By 

    It’s never easy reviewing a new Fall album, mainly because – in the experience of this reviewer at least – Fall albums always sound terrible on first listen. You hear it and think “Boysadear, but this is a lot of ramshackle crap”. Then, insidiously – almost sneakily – some angular guitar hook or muttered guttural utterance embeds itself in your brain; you find yourself inexplicably returning again and again to this record that so baffled and frustrated you; fast forward a few weeks and you’re telling anyone who’ll listen that the new Fall album might just be their best ever…