The Rise & Fall by Madness

The Rise & Fall, the fourth album from English ska band Madness, came out on Stiff in 1982, and it's the record where they got ambitious. Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley produced it, and the band, Suggs on lead vocals, Mike Barson on keyboards, piano and vibraphone, Lee Thompson on saxophone, Cathal Smyth on trumpet and a bit of everything else, Mark Bedford on bass and Daniel Woodgate on drums, wandered far from the dancefloor stomp, into jazz, English music hall and Eastern flavors.

The songs hang together so well that people have come to call it a concept album, and it's easy to hear why: it flows like one long daydream, wistful and funny and a little bittersweet. "Our House" is the crown jewel, a big, warm, bustling sing-along that sounds like a knees-up on a Sunday afternoon. One reviewer at the time rated it the best Madness record yet.

America never got the album, but it got the song. Several tracks, "Our House" among them, went onto the 1983 US compilation Madness, and it became the band's only top 10 hit in the States.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.