Somebody has dug up Mark E. Smith’s body and dressed it for the party. I hate posthumous albums. Unless you have written or audio proof that the deceased musician wanted these recordings finished and released, don’t do it…
Post Script arrives eight years after Mark E Smith’s death, billed as the final album from the Fall. But it’s really nine scraps of Smith: lost vocal and lyrical pieces reworked into grinding industrial soundscapes, and it plays like a séance run by people who never met the real man, or the ghost now. His voice is mixed so low, and its not The Fall.
Nobody knows whether Smith wanted these recordings out. He was a man who sacked bands for sport and sent finished tapes back with a snarl. He killed his own songs in front of you. Now unfinished, unapproved fragments get buffed up and sold as the real thing, and the only person who could say ‘no’ isn’t around to ask. His fiancée and sister also aren’t happy. And what is “The Fall” here? Strip out Smith, and there’s no band, only the logo.
The marketing leans on former manager and sometime early 2000s member Ed Blaney, who announced the album and called it “brilliant.” One passing figure from the long, bruised history of the group does not make a Fall record.
