Pitchfork: The Fall to Tour America This Summer

For 30 years now, Mark E. Smith, the Fall's unrelenting and uncompromising leader, has tongue-lashed audiences with pulsating songs, bewildering wordplay, and that oh-so-famous accent. (He has also lashed his fellow band members with fists and telephone poles, but that's another matter.)

This summer, Smith will take his boxing ring on the road, with a month-long tour of the United States. It will be broken up by a week-long recording stint in Los Angeles, during which the band will lay down tracks for their next album, due in early 2007 on Narnack. While the band is busy sticking it to America, on May 15, their 1995 odds and ends collection The Twenty-Seven Points and 2001 album Are You Are Missing Winner will be reissued in the UK by Castle/Sanctuary.

Every nation's saving grace:

04-21 Berlin, Germany - Maria am Ostbahnhof
05-02 Austin, TX - Stubb's *
05-04 Dallas, TX - Gypsy Tea Room *
05-06 Tucson, AZ - Club Congress *
05-07 Phoenix, AZ - Brickhouse Theater *
05-09 San Diego, CA - House of Blues *
05-11 Pomona, CA - Glass House *
05-13 Los Angeles, CA - Knitting Factory *
05-14 San Francisco, CA - The Independent *
05-23 Los Angeles, CA - Knitting Factory *
05-24 Salt Lake City, UT - The Depot *
05-26 Boulder, CO - Boulder Theater *
05-27 Kansas City, MO - Record Bar *
05-29 Minneapolis, MN - Varsity Theatre *
05-30 Chicago, IL - Logan Square Auditorium *#
06-01 New York City, NY - Knitting Factory *
06-02 Brooklyn, NY - Southpaw *
06-10 Manchester, England - New Century Hall

* with the Talk
# with the Cairo Gang

The Fall's 30th anniversary will be celebrated not only with that June 10 show in their hometown of Manchester, but with an art exhibition which will run from May 18 to June 12 at the Praxis Hagen Gallery in Berlin. The event, entitled "Paintwork", features paintings, drawings, videos, sculptures, and performances by associates of the band as well as those influenced by them.

On May 9, while in San Diego, the Fall will make an appearance on the television show "Fox Rox", on, um, Fox. We've never seen the show, but we're pretty sure it sux.