The fiancée and last manager of the late Mark E. Smith, frontman of The Fall, has sharply objected to the release of an album being marketed as the band's last official album. She called it "ethically wrong" and a "cash grab." The Guardian ↗
When the album Post Script was announced in June, several media outlets assumed that its nine tracks contained recordings the final lineup of The Fall had been working on before Smith's death in January 2018. It later emerged, however, that the album consists of unused studio vocals recorded between 2001 and 2014, to which the band's longtime collaborators Ed Blaney and Simon "Ding" Archer posthumously added music. The Guardian ↗
"They're selling it as a 'last album' so people think Mark made it on his deathbed, but none of it [vocally] was created after New Facts Emerge [from 2017]," said Pamela Vander. "I have Mark's actual last recordings — he was working on a cover of a Madonna song." The album's creators, on the other hand, defend it as a "great, positive record" made out of love and respect. The Guardian ↗
The Fall are among the most influential bands of British post-punk — over forty years they released more than thirty albums, and more than sixty musicians passed through the band. The only constant was always Mark E. Smith. You can find the lyrics to three of their songs on SuperMusic.
Illustrative photo: Mark E. Smith in 2006. Photo: samsaundersleeds / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Dispute over The Fall's last album: "love and respect," or a "cash grab"?
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