The Fall
Are You Are Missing Winner

Always considered a misstep, and fundamentally a weak album by fans in the long career of the sinister Mark E. Smith (R.I.P.) of his Fall, "Are You Are Missing Winner" was released at a rather disastrous time for the Mancunian band: yet another lineup fired at the end of 2001, and few financial means besides alcoholic excesses and tax debts accumulated years prior, brought MES on tour practically everywhere. It was precisely in 2002 that I saw them in Bologna, at the Covo, in one of the very few Italian dates allowed in 38 years of career, precisely on the occasion of the release of this LP. Which cuts out all the electronics used until then, to return to a raw Post-Punk-Garage with sporadic Morricone-like tinges (see Crop-Dust) and Rockabilly, but which irretrievably founders against Mr. Smith's rotten ego (never before in such a truly noxious boozy-bilious mood), a slapdash and approximate production, that jolts the volumes from one track to another, distorts and recycles multiple versions of the same song ("My Ex-Classmates Kids" and "I Woke Up in The City", released on 45 then included in the deluxe CD version), haphazardly covers an old R. Dean Taylor song and grinds everything in the semi-improvised final medley, perhaps only inserted for duration reasons. Speaking of covers, if you manage to get to the end of the Iggy-Poppian "Ibis-Afro Man" and its three minutes of mechanical monkey, you really have something not quite right. The liner notes (if it can be called a cover) credit "Burgeois Blues" to Robert Johnson but it is by Leadbelly, just to understand the clarity with which it was all packaged. The guitarist Ben Prichard, at the time newly-promoted lead guitar by the despotic leader, later said that due to the reduced budget the chosen recording studio was terrible, a basement infested with rats and below the floor of a gym, so during the day the noise of weights being dropped by the gym-goers above could be heard. Moreover, Mark was drinking heavily. Andrew Coven's review from the Birmingham Post at the release of the record said: "It almost smells like piss," alluding to the babbled and unintelligible lyrics of a Smith (for a little while longer) in full physical decline.

History has then taught us that the phoenix-Fall resurrected several times (and with a lineup finally almost stable at the end) until the disappearance of the Leader at the dawn of 2018, for which the greatness of the Artist stands out even through minor trials dictated by necessity like this one. I, needless to say, like it quite a lot even if I am not John Peel (R.I.P. to him too!), but the rawest Fall are here and in "Hex Enduction Hour", for sure.