“Flywheel turn their love for The Fall into a noisy, honest tribute that refuses to look away.”
There is a lot more going on in “I Want to Join The Fall” than the title might suggest. Flywheel clearly love The Fall, but this is not a simple tribute where everything gets polished up and turned into praise. The band takes a more uncomfortable route. They look at Mark E. Smith, the music he created, and the complicated relationship people can have with an artist whose work means a great deal to them.
That idea gives the song some real character. Flywheel seem to understand exactly why The Fall have stayed important to them for so long. The track has a driving rhythm that keeps pushing forward, with heavy bass sitting underneath layers of guitars and noise. Ann Marie Ryan’s voice stays above all of it, which is particularly interesting when you know the band’s older material. Their early shoegaze sound often placed the vocals deeper inside the mix. Here, Ryan is much easier to hear, and that gives the song a stronger personality. The Krautrock influence also fits nicely. There is a repetitive quality to the rhythm that keeps the track moving without making it feel rushed. It has that slightly hypnotic feeling where the instrumental parts keep circling while the subject matter becomes more intense. I also like the way the song changes as it goes on. The earlier sections have more tension. The guitars and rhythm feel restless, almost confrontational. Then things start to open up. The ending moves towards dream-pop and feels softer than what came before. That change matters because the lyrics are doing something similar. The song begins with questions and uncomfortable observations, but eventually reaches a place where admiration can exist alongside criticism.
That is probably the most interesting thing about “I Want to Join The Fall.” Flywheel do not pretend that loving someone’s music means you have to ignore everything else about them. They can recognise the problems surrounding Smith while still admitting how deeply his work affected them. There is history behind the band too. Flywheel came out of Cork’s independent music scene in the early 1990s and released their debut album She in 1996. Then they disappeared for years before reforming in 2020. That long gap makes this new period of the band feel especially meaningful. They are not simply trying to recreate what they sounded like three decades ago. The guitars still carry that shoegaze weight, but the songwriting feels more direct and the vocals have a much bigger role. “I Want to Join The Fall” is the third song from a planned five-track EP, and it leaves plenty of room for the story to continue. For now, Flywheel have made something that works both as a fan’s tribute and as a thoughtful piece of songwriting. It has noise, melody, history and a little bit of discomfort. Most importantly, it sounds like a band still finding new reasons to make music after all these years.
English