Hip Priest
Recorded in Iceland in a single take, one of Smith's most personal songs.
The Fall, from Hex Enduction Hour (1982)
- Released
- 1982
- Album
- Hex Enduction Hour
"Hip Priest" was recorded in Reykjavik in September 1981 at the Hljodriti studio and appears on Hex Enduction Hour. It was done in a single take. It is one of Smith's most personal songs, apparently written in bemusement at a recent rise in the band's popularity, and it has been compared to dub, though one description says it sounds as if it was invented "in a drizzly motorway rather than in recording studios in Jamaica". Pitchfork called it a more contemplative bit of warbled poetry. The album version runs 7:45.
An excerpt was used in 1991 in the climactic closing scene of Jonathan Demme's film The Silence of the Lambs. In 1988 the song was re-recorded in a glam rock style as "Big New Prinz" for I Am Kurious, Oranj, and the Pixies covered that version on their 2013 tour.
There are 91 logged setlists, the last on 30 April 1998.
Covers and versions
- Pixies (2013) Covered the reworked version, "Big New Prinz", on their world tour.
More songs by The Fall
Totally Wired, Paint Work, Cruiser's Creek, Hit the North, Glam-Racket
Sources
- Hex Enduction Hour, Wikipedia
- 10 Songs That Defined the Fall and Mark E. Smith, Pitchfork (2018-01-24)
- The Fall (band), Wikipedia
- Mark E Smith, founder and lead singer with the Fall, dies aged 60, The Guardian (2018-01-24)