Are You Are Missing Winner
| Are You Are Missing Winner | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
||||
| Studio album by The Fall | ||||
| Released | 5 November 2001 | |||
| Recorded | August 2001 | |||
| Genre | Post-punk | |||
| Length | 47:47 | |||
| Label | Cog Sinister / Voiceprint | |||
| Producer | Mark E. Smith, Jim Watts, Spencer Birtwistle, Ed Blaney | |||
| The Fall chronology | ||||
|
||||
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    |
| BBC Music | favourable |
| Q | |
| The Times | 2/3 |
| The Wire | favourable |
Are You Are Missing Winner is the twenty-second album by British 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: "We are the new Fall".
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".
The Unutterable's flirtation with drum and bass is replaced on Are You Are Missing Winner by a more rockabilly-influenced sound. 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"). 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 Music reissue.
Critical reception to Are You Are Missing Winner was somewhat mixed, often focusing unfavourably on the contrast with The Unutterable. Among the album's more negative reviews is that of John Bush of Allmusic, who suggests, "Are You Are Missing Winner represents a rare misstep for the mighty Fall." 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."
...
Wikipedia