The Rise & Fall is the fourth studio album by English ska/pop band Madness. It was originally released on the 5th of November, 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 "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 vocalistSuggs claimed that all the band members were told to write about their childhood memories for The Rise & Fall. 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 humor and carnivalesque 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 KinksVillage Green Preservation Society did in 1968 or Blur's Parklife would do in 1994." In an interview with Popular 1 Magazine, guitarist Kavus Torabi of Cardiacs named The Rise & Fall as one of his favourite albums.
