The English post-punk group The Fall was down to two members and facing a deadline. Singer Mark E. Smith and multi-instrumentalist Marc Riley had written much of a second album, but the guitarist who helped start the band had walked away. On October 26, 1979, the group released Dragnet, the record born from that crisis. What happened next reshaped the group for the next decade and a half.
A second album in eight months
The Fall released Dragnet, their second studio album, on the Step-Forward Records label on October 26, 1979. It arrived less than eight months after their debut, Live at the Witch Trials, but it sounded like the work of a different band. The clear, sharp edges of that first record were gone, replaced by a thick, lo-fi murk that Riley later said was a deliberate contrast.
The crisis began at the recording session in early August 1979 at Cargo Studios in Rochdale, England. By then, only Smith and Marc Riley remained from the previous line-up. Drummer Karl Burns had left soon after the debut, replaced by Mike Leigh. Founder Martin Bramah quit in April 1979, when part of the material for the second album was already written.
Scanlon and Hanley join the fold
Smith moved fast. He brought in guitarist Craig Scanlon and bassist Steve Hanley, both roadies for The Fall and members of the support group Staff 9, as well as friends of Marc Riley. Scanlon was 18, Hanley was 19. They would become the musical backbone of The Fall until the middle of the 1990s. The new line-up also changed how Riley worked. He moved from bass back to guitar, the instrument he had started on. When Yvonne Pawlett, who had played on the single 'Rowche Rumble', left, Riley took over keyboards as well.
The sound of Dragnet baffled the studio. Smith said Cargo Studios was so unhappy with the result that it asked to have its name removed from the cover. Riley insisted the murk was on purpose, a reaction against the clean production of Live at the Witch Trials. The result was an album that felt claustrophobic and strange, full of self-referential lyrics about the music industry. The album runs 45 minutes, but its murky textures make it feel longer, as if the songs are pressing in from all sides. That density became part of its reputation.
Smith said Cargo Studios was so unhappy with the result that it asked to have its name removed from the cover.
At least two songs, 'Printhead' and 'Your Heart Out', draw directly on what reviewers had written about the band on stage. This wasn't a band ignoring its critics; it was a band folding them into the noise. The music press noticed. NME placed Dragnet at number 35 among the best albums of 1979. The album's credits hid a few surprises. Craig Scanlon was listed as 'Craig Scanlan', while backing vocalist Kay Carroll appeared as 'Mrs. Horace Sullivan'. The cover was designed by Tina Prior, with photographs by Brendan Jackson and the back cover and insert by Mark E. Smith.
Dragnet was the last album The Fall made for Step-Forward, the label owned by Miles Copeland III. By early 1980 the group had signed with Rough Trade Records. The album's rough, uncompromising approach became a marker for the band's future, even as its line-up changed again and again. The album's afterlife kept growing. A 2004 Castle Music reissue remastered the sound from the original master tapes for the first time, adding the singles 'Rowche Rumble' and 'Fiery Jack', their B-sides, and previously unreleased alternate takes and session fragments. In 2016 Superior Viaduct reissued the album on vinyl.
Years later, critics kept returning to Dragnet. Billboard writer Geeta Dayal named it the fourth best album by The Fall in 2018. Pitchfork gave a 2016 reissue an 8.7 out of 10. The record that began with a two-man crisis ended up as one of the band's defining statements. Jason Heller of Pitchfork wrote that 'Spectre Vs Rector' practically invented post-rock with its hum and subconscious menace.