The Fall

Imperial Wax Solvent is the 26th album by The Fall, released in 2008 on Sanctuary, and the first recording by the line-up that carried the group to the end. Well received by critics, it entered the UK albums chart at number 35 in May 2008. This 3CD edition adds an unused version of the album recorded at Britannia Row and a complete concert from May 2008.

After the American musicians heard on Reformation Post TLC had left, Mark E. Smith kept keyboardist Elena Poulou and bassist Dave Spurr, and brought in guitarist Pete Greenway, a guest on the previous album, and drummer Keiron Melling. Cherry Red describes this formation as the band's last and longest-serving incarnation. Smith produced the record with Grant Showbiz, Tim Gracielands and Andi Toma, who also co-wrote Is This New. Spurr shares the writing of most of the songs with Smith, and Poulou wrote Taurig on her own.

The album includes a cover of Tony McPhee's Strangetown, and the original CD mixes stereo and mono. Alton Towers and Wolf Kidult Man open the record, followed by the eleven-minute 50 Year Old Man, the longest track. Disc two, recorded at Britannia Row in London on 21 September 2007, is an earlier take on the album that was set aside. It includes three songs that did not make the final release: Ponto, Smith and Mark and Inferior Product Man. Disc three is the full set at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea on 10 May 2008. Here the new songs sit beside Fall Sound, White Lightning, Mr Pharmacist and Blindness.

The album also made the news for an odd reason. In early 2009, as The Sun reported, the first shipment of the debut album by the teenage singer Faryl Smith arrived from the pressing plant carrying the music of Imperial Wax Solvent instead of hers. Cherry Red reissued the record on vinyl for Record Store Day 2019, before this expanded edition.

3CD set on Cherry Red (CDTRED810) in an 8-panel digipak with a 20-page booklet, first issued in October 2020 and now repressed, with notes by Daryl Easlea and remastering by Andy Pearce.