The Rise & Fall (album)



The Rise & Fall is the fourth studio album by English ska/pop band Madness. It was originally released in October 1982, on the label Stiff. This album saw Madness at their most experimental, exhibiting a range of musical styles including jazz, English music hall, and Eastern influences. NME described it at the time of its release as "The best Madness record". It has often been retrospectively described as a concept album.

Though the album was never released in the US, several tracks were later placed on the compilation Madness, including the melancholic pop of "Our House", the band's only top 10 hit in America.

Content
Initially conceived as a concept album about nostalgia for childhood, the concept was eventually dropped, though the original theme is still evident particularly in the title track and the album's major hit "Our House". This theme was also mentioned recently when interviewed as part of T in The Park highlights, where their lead vocalist Suggs claimed that all the band members were told to write about their childhood memories for The Rise & Fall (although he did say that their keyboardist Mike Barson got the wrong idea, and went off and wrote about New Delhi).

Although the band had previously been avowedly apolitical, the track "Blue Skinned Beast" was an overt satire on the then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her handling of the Falklands War, paving the way for more political comment on subsequent Madness albums.

Critical reception
In a retrospective review for AllMusic, critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the album four and a half out of five stars and wrote that "The Rise & Fall is recognizably Madness in sound and sensibility; faint echoes of their breakneck nutty beginnings can be heard on "Blue Skinned Beast" and "Mr. Speaker Gets the Word," the melodies are outgrowths of such early masterpieces as "My Girl," there’s a charming, open-hearted humo[u]r and carnival[-]esque swirl that ties everything together." also noting that "The rest of the record contains the same wit, effervescence, and joy, capturing what British pop life was all about in 1982, just as The Kinks Village Green Preservation Society did in 1968 or Blur's Parklife would do in 1994."

Personnel
Madness
 * Suggs (Graham McPherson) – lead vocals
 * Mike Barson – keyboards; harmonica, piano
 * Chris Foreman – guitars
 * Lee Thompson – saxophones
 * Daniel Woodgate (Woody) – drums
 * Mark Bedford (Bedders) – bass guitar, double bass
 * Chas Smash (Cathal Smyth) – backing vocals, trumpet; lead vocals on "Madness (Is All in the Mind)"

Additional personnel
 * David Bedford – string arrangements

Production
 * Clive Langer – producer
 * Alan Winstanley – producer
 * David Wooley – engineer
 * Jeremy Allom – engineer