The Light User Syndrome

Studio album by The Fall

Released

10 June 1996

Recorded

The Dairy, London, 1995 and 1996

Genre

Post-punk

Length

59:30

Label

Jet

Producer

Mike Bennett, Mark E. Smith

The Fall chronology

The Twenty-Seven Points
(1995)

The Light User Syndrome
(1996)

Levitate
(1997)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
NME	7/10
Trouser Press	favourable

The Light User Syndrome is an album (the 18th) 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 quit the group 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".

Brix Smith told Simon Ford that The Light User Syndrome was recorded very quickly, with Mark E. Smith absent for much of the recording, delivering nearly all his vocals on the final day. Despite this, alternate versions of many of the album's tracks featured heavily across the series of compilation albums issued by the Receiver label in the late 1990s. The album also features some vocals from producer Mike Bennett, as well as a rare lead vocal from drummer and guitarist Karl Burns on a cover version of Johnny Paycheck's "Stay Away (Ol' White Train)."

The tour supporting the album was disastrous due to Smith's heavy drinking and misbehaviour, with Brix walking out of the group after the soundcheck at Motherwell Concert Hall (although she would return for one last gig at the Forum in London) and a gig in Worthing being declared by long-serving bassist Steve Hanley to be the worst Fall gig ever. By the end of the year, they were playing without Brix, Nagle and Burns, although both Nagle and Burns would return during 1997 for follow-up album Levitate.

The album has been reissued twice, firstly by Receiver in 1999 and then by Castle Music in 2002. Both of these editions added "The Chiselers" single as well as its B-side "Chilinist".

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Wikipedia