The Fall are the greatest band you’ve never heard of.  No, seriously.  The all-time favorite band of famous British BBC DJ John Peel, the Fall have been consistently making music since 1976, their lineup ever shifting around sole constant member Mark E. Smith, also their founder, main songwriter, and lyricist.  Grotesque is the Fall’s third album, following underground favorites Live at the Witch Trials and Dragnet, featuring a five-man lineup of the multitalented Mark E. Smith (handling vocals, tapes, guitars, and kazoos), as well as a guitarist/keyboardist, second guitarist, bass player, and drummer.

	The Fall’s music is, in a word, abrasive.  Loosely rooted in post-punk, it is based on monotonous repetition and the use of often atonal riffs, and centered around Smith’s ever-present uniquely caustic voice.  It takes an open mind to appreciate this album.  The eight-minute rant “C’n’C-s Mithering” is composed of one whopping acoustic riff with some simplistic drums thrown in and crowned by Smith’s resentful lyrics (I’ll describe the lyrics, a force quite unto themselves, as well as Smith’s voice, later).  “New Face in Hell” is similar: a basic acoustic riff laid upon a drum beat, with only an intermittent meandering kazoo to break the monotony.  Indeed, in one of the only songs with more than one main section, “The NWRA”, Smith abruptly screams SHIFT as the musicians begin the next part, as if in self-reference to his band’s tiresome repetition.  Mindless repetition, although key to the Fall’s sound as a band, certainly doesn’t constitute the whole of the album.  Many of the songs, such as the opener “Pay Your Rates”, “English Scheme”, “Container Drivers”, and “In the Park” can be best described as a rough, harsh, yet spirited form of rockabilly punk.

	If any other vocalist were to sing over these songs (although sing hardly encapsulates Mark E. Smith’s vocals), they would probably be terrible.  But, to use a trite cliche (and who doesn’t love those?), Smith is the glue that holds the Fall together.  His voice, a warbly, atonal sound that honestly defies description, is like no other.  It is truly its own instrument, ranging from bizarre off-key pseudo-singing to a strange chant.  No discussion of Mark E. Smith would be complete without a description of his lyrics.  Cryptic, hyper-literate, wryly sarcastic, I could spend hours on Thesaurus.com trying to find a good way to describe them and I still wouldn’t have it.