(Credits: Far Out / The Fall / Matt Biddulph)
Sun 21 December 2025 4:00, UK
Even though they’re not one of the many artists namedropped in LCD Soundsystem’s deliciously ironic breakout ‘Losing My Edge’, it’s no secret that the project’s spearhead, James Murphy, is a massive fan of Mancunian art-punks The Fall.
Despite there being no explicit reference to the band fronted by Mark E Smith on this track that lists virtually all of his other primary influences, it’s still quite an obvious comparison to make between the two artists: one man guiding an ever-changing cast of musicians to follow his every demand and make oblique yet grooveable punk-adjacent music with sardonic lyricism. This could be either band, right?
As much as LCD Soundsystem tended to veer slightly towards the electronic side of things, while the Fall were more focused on their use of guitars for the majority of their existence, you can see that there’s a certain relativity between the two acts, and that they both occupied similar spaces during the peaks of their career. It was punk music with art school sensibilities, but possessed an outsiderish quality that rallied against the pretentious individuals within their scenes with sarcastic glee.
It’s not known what Smith made of Murphy’s project, and knowing his distaste for large amounts of other artists that he expressed with his razor-sharp tongue, aided by the lubrication of at least six pints of bitter, he probably wouldn’t have found much to say about LCD Soundsystem that could be considered remotely complimentary. To him, it was probably Yank nonsense, and there’s very little that would have been able to convince him otherwise.
That being said, not knowing what his hero thought of him was probably for the best in Murphy’s case, and without having been slated by his acerbic putdowns, he could continue to idolise the man for the incredible artist that he was. However, unlike Murphy, Smith was no accomplished musician, even by his own admission, and relied heavily on his way with words and unamiable persona as a vehicle for his cultish infamy.
Of course, the musicians who were able to withstand the rigorous hiring and firing process that Smith operated within the ranks of The Fall always brought an extra dimension to the worlds of magic realism that he developed through his often scrambled verse, but the frequent highlights of the band’s material were the ways in which Smith went about describing the most ordinary scenarios in visceral fashion.
Murphy has spoken on many occasions about why he adores Smith’s lyrics so much, and while he commented in an interview with Red Bull Music Academy that his favourite song by the band is ‘Paint Works’, his favourite line ever uttered by Smith is one taken from perhaps their most violent and despicable album in terms of its content.
Grotesque (After the Gramme) was the third record by The Fall, released in 1980, and after the darkness of Live at the Witch Trials and Dragnet, the band upped their game and released an album so heavily coated in grime and filth that it managed to live up to its foul name. Taken from ‘In The Park’, a song which has Smith ramble about his fantasies of doing the deed in a municipal space, the first verse ends with the line, “A good mind does not a good fuck make”.
Murphy proclaimed during an interview with NME in 2010 that this was his favourite line from any song ever released, not just by The Fall, calling it “an undeniably good line”. Presumably a fan of Smith when painting the grimmest images through his no-holds-barred word selection, this is the sort of slimy line that adequately sums up the discomfort that The Fall were able to deliver at their peak, and while there are plenty of other lines of theirs that’ll make you squirm as well as laugh, this one certainly does the trick.
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