| Are You Are Missing Winner | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 5 November 2001 | |||
| Recorded | August 2001 | |||
| Studio | Noise Box, Manchester [1] | |||
| Genre | Alternative rock | |||
| Length | 47:47 | |||
| Label | Cog Sinister / Voiceprint | |||
| Producer |
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| The Fall chronology | ||||
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Are You Are Missing Winner is the twenty-second album by English post-punk band the Fall, released in November 2001 on CD and in January 2002 as a vinyl picture disc.
Since the previous year's release of the critically acclaimed The Unutterable , Fall front man Mark E. Smith had replaced his entire band with a new line-up, a fact he acknowledges in a refrain in the album's opening track: "Not like the old one/We are the new Fall". [2] [3]
The group was short of money at the time, so the album was recorded very quickly in a cheap studio. Guitarist Ben Pritchard described the making of the album as a "very miserable experience [...] There were rats running around. There was a weightlifter's gymnasium above us, you'd be recording a take and suddenly you'd hear BOOM dropping barbells and dumb-bells on the floor and you'd have to stop and start again". [4]
The Unutterable's flirtation with drum and bass is replaced on Are You Are Missing Winner by a more rockabilly-influenced sound. [5] The album features a cover version of the northern soul track "Gotta See Jane", originally by R. Dean Taylor (The Fall had previously achieved a minor hit in 1987 with a version of Taylor's "There's a Ghost in My House"). [5] Also featured are versions of Lead Belly's "The Bourgeois Blues", as "Bourgeois Town", and of Iggy Pop's "African Man", as "Ibis-Afro Man", the latter being particularly experimental with different recordings of the track frequently playing simultaneously throughout.
"Kick the Can" takes its title from an episode of The Twilight Zone .
The album's release was so rushed that the tracks weren't even mastered properly, resulting in wildly uneven audio levels and quality. It was remastered in 2006 for a Castle Communications reissue.
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    [6] |
| BBC Music | favourable [2] |
| The Birmingham Post | [7] |
| Q | [8] |
| The Times | 2/3 [9] |
| The Wire | favourable [10] |
Critical reception to Are You Are Missing Winner was mixed, often focusing unfavourably on the contrast with The Unutterable. Among the album's more negative reviews were that of John Bush of AllMusic, who suggests, "Are You Are Missing Winner represents a rare misstep for the mighty Fall", [6] and Andrew Cowen for The Birmingham Post , who called it "appallingly recorded throwaway kids stuff", and "scrappy even by their standards", going on to write "Mark E Smith sounds paralytic throughout, mumbling and ranting like some sorry old man. You can almost smell the wee." [7]
Edwin Pouncey, writing in The Wire , is more upbeat: "…Smith scatterguns half remembered lyrics and conducts a whirlpool of splintered guitar, dishevelled drum and battered bass sounds with a Quasimodic Gene Vincent leather gloved fist that claws even deeper into the raw clay of innovation that birthed rock 'n' roll and continues to fuel Smith's unique vision". [11]
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Jim's "The Fall"" | Mark E. Smith, Jim Watts | 2:39 |
| 2. | "Bourgeois Town" |
| 3:41 |
| 3. | "Crop-Dust" | Smith, Spencer Birtwistle [n 2] | 5:31 |
| 4. | "My Ex-Classmates' Kids" | Smith, Ed Blaney | 4:51 |
| 5. | "Kick the Can" | Smith, Ben Pritchard | 5:13 |
| 6. | "Gotta See Jane" | R. Dean Taylor | 2:23 |
| 7. | "Ibis-Afro Man" | Smith, Watts, Iggy Pop, Scott Thurston [n 3] | 9:32 |
| 8. | "The Acute" | Smith, Brian Fanning | 3:19 |
| 9. | "Hollow Mind" | Smith, Blaney | 3:32 |
| 10. | "Reprise: Jane – Prof Mick – Ey Bastardo" | Birtwistle, Blaney | 7:00 |
| Total length: | 47:47 | ||
The album was remastered and expanded by Castle Music in 2006. The sound quality is less erratic than on the original edition, and 6 extra tracks are added as follows:
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11. | "Rude (All the Time)" | Smith, Blaney | 2:44 |
| 12. | "I Wake Up in the City" | Smith, Blaney | 4:40 |
| 13. | "New Formation Sermon" | Smith | 2:04 |
| 14. | "Distilled Mug Art" | Smith, Blaney | 3:33 |
| 15. | "My Ex-Classmates' Kids" (live in Cologne 23 October 2001) | Smith, Blaney | 4:59 |
| 16. | "Where's the Fuckin' Taxi? Cunt" | Smith, Blaney, Fanning, Les Fisher | 5:09 |
| Total length: | 71:02 | ||
The Fall were an English post-punk group, formed in 1976 in Prestwich, Greater Manchester. They underwent many line-up changes, with vocalist and founder Mark E. Smith as the only constant member. The Fall's long-term musicians included drummers Paul Hanley, Simon Wolstencroft and Karl Burns; guitarists Craig Scanlon and Brix Smith; and bassists Marc Riley, Steve Hanley, whose melodic, circular bass lines are widely credited with shaping the band's sound from early 1980s albums such as Hex Enduction Hour to the late 1990s.
Raw Power is the third studio album by American rock band the Stooges, released on February 7, 1973 by Columbia Records. The album departed from the "groove-ridden, feel-based songs" of the band's first two records in favor of a more anthemic hard rock approach inspired by new guitarist James Williamson, who co-wrote the album's eight songs with singer Iggy Pop. Though not initially commercially successful, Raw Power gained a cult following in the years following its release and, like its predecessors The Stooges (1969) and Fun House (1970), is considered a forerunner of punk rock.
Kill City is a studio album by American musicians Iggy Pop and James Williamson, both formerly of the rock band the Stooges. It was recorded as a demo in 1975 but released in altered form in November 1977 by record label Bomp!.
The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country on the Click) is the 23rd studio album by the Fall, released on Action Records in the United Kingdom in 2003, and then on Narnack Records in the United States, with a slightly altered track listing, in 2004.
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2G+2 is an album of mixed live and studio material by English rock band the Fall, released in 2002. It features three new songs recorded in the studio—"New Formation Sermon", "I Wake Up in the City" and "Distilled Mug Art"—and the rest of the album was recorded at performances on the group's United States tour in late 2001.
The Unutterable is the 21st album by English rock band the Fall, released in 2000. It was recorded with much the same lineup as had appeared on the group's previous album, 1999's The Marshall Suite. However, whilst this version of the band was still coming together as the previous album was being made, by the time of the current record, they had had a year to jell as a unit. Therefore, while there is some similarity in the sound of the two, The Unutterable was much more consistent in its production and songwriting. It was generally well received by the critics, being praised as a "career peak" by Dave Simpson of The Guardian and prompting Piers Martin of the NME to suggest, "...this is as vital and relevant as The Fall have sounded for a considerable length of time. "
The Light User Syndrome is the 18th album by the Fall, released in 1996 on Jet Records. It was the group's first album to feature keyboard player and guitarist Julia Nagle and the last to feature Brix Smith, while longtime guitarist Craig Scanlon was fired in late 1995 during troubled recording sessions for "The Chiselers" single which preceded the album. A version of "The Chiselers" is included on the album as "Interlude/Chilinism".
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Touch Sensitive... Bootleg Box Set is a five disc live box set by the Fall, released in 2003. Each disc features a full live set from either April or November 2001, making it the most comprehensive live document of any era of The Fall's long career thus far. The discs are not arranged chronologically. Due to the brief timespan, there is considerable repetition - the bulk of the material is drawn from 2000's The Unutterable and 2001's Are You Are Missing Winner. As the use of the word bootleg implies, the sound quality varies but it is generally superior. A handful of tracks from the first 2 discs also feature on the 2G+2 album.
Yeti is the second studio album by German rock band Amon Düül II, first released in April 1970 on Liberty as a double LP. The album was produced by Olaf Kübler and Amon Düül II, and engineered by Willy Schmidt, "with a little help of Siegfried E. Loch". Including both short songs and longer, improvisational tracks, British avant-garde music magazine The Wire describes Yeti as "one of the cornerstones of both Amon Düül's career and the entire Krautrock movement".
Julia Adamson is a Canadian composer, musician and current label manager of Invisiblegirl Records. In 1967 her family moved to Manchester, England.
Imperial Wax Solvent is a studio album by the Fall – the band's 26th – released in the UK on 28 April 2008.
Last Night at The Palais is a live album by English post-punk band the Fall, recorded at the Hammersmith Palais on 1 April 2007 and released in 2009.
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