The Fall get Grotesque

The Fall : The N.W.R.A.

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On November 17, 1980 The Fall released their third album , Grotesque (After the Gramme). Mark E. Smith yelps and drawls in his own peculiar tone-deaf style over ragged, lo-fi, two chord riffs that Smith described as "Country and Northern." 

Some of the songs, like "C'n'C's Mithering" and "The N.W.R.A.", ramble on for seven + moments while Smith takes on subjects like the music business, amphetamines, middle class liberals and on the final track (The North Will Rise Again), the rise of Northern England.

Smith wrote about the Fall's album in his memoir Renegade: 

Grotesque is a very English album. It’s written from the inside, from experience; the real thing. Pub men can tell you a lot about the English way. But it’s tricky, because it wasn’t a defence either. It wasn’t some sort of kitchen-sink apology; or even one of those crap salt-of-the-earth things, where the working class are delighted with their lot, trudging around potless and pissed. 

I don’t really write from a solid idea. It’s never that certain at the start. You get to what you’re saying through the writing, the process; and then you move on. 

But the place for Grotesque certainly wasn’t indie music. 

Even though it wasn’t respected at the time, it won us a groundswell of support. That was the great thing about it. People of a certain age, say twenty-five and upwards, said that it was their record, they related to it – not people in groups who heard it as nothing more than a naff LP recorded by a bunch of pony musicians, and certainly not the critics.  But the most telling aspect of that period was the fact that I realized there’s a lot of ambitious people in this country without the talent. It’s a disease.