We Fell To Earth ‘The Double’

Okay, hands up. I really should have mentioned this earlier. I first heard We Fell To Earth last autumn. A good friend has fingers in about as many pies as I do. Mostly, it has to be said, they are real pies with meat and stuff in them, but on occasion he is also known to do some work, which on this occasion lead to getting involved with WFTE.

And so here we are, the following summer, with a very nice head of steam building and, blimey, when you listen you can’t be surprised that record labels are falling over themselves just like they used to in the old days.

Their ‘about’ bit on their website does an extensive job of telling their tale, so I won’t bother rehashing it. Carrying on from my Ambulances post when were were talking about good self-PR, WFTE leave no stone unturned. In among it all there’s mention of musical influnces. Not sure I’d be rushing to listen with influences such as Suicide, Jefferson Airplane and Spaceman 3, but each to their own, and IMHO they’re under-selling themselves.

In very simple terms, and I am as simple as they come, We Fell To Earth are much more straightforward, musicwise. They are astonishingly good. Richard File – who with Wendy Rae Fowler forms the nucleus – stepped into the breach when DJ Shadow left UNKLE. They have also been tangled up with Queens of the Stone Age and Mark Lanegan. All very decent pegs to hang your hat on. It has me all ears in a jif. So then you listen.

Talk Talk and Radiohead? I will have some of that, thank you very much. And yes, it is always, always dangerous to use the ‘R’ word, because everyone wishes they were like them, which no doubt is why WFTE carefully avoid it. But their brooding, swollen, rumbling widescreen sound shares a sensibility, the same sensibility that ver ‘Head hoovered up from the likes of the magnificent Talk Talk. It’s heritage. It is.

We Fell To Earth are staggeringly good. We will be hearing from them again. Mark my words. You know, I should be writing biogs and press releases again. Reasonable rates if anyone’s interested. Imagine.

More hear…
- Their very own, proper, very good site
- The MS, natch
- The ‘Careful What You Wish For’ EP came out at the end of April and there’s an album in the can, which you’d guess will see the light sooner rather than later.