recordings of rehearsals and conversations. "Gramme Friday" was described as a "hymn to amphetamines". The album's closing track, "The N.W.R.A" ("The North Will Rise Again", not, as some supposed, "The North West Republican Army") was viewed by AllMusic as "Smith's own take on the long-standing "soft south/grim north" dichotomy in English society", while Robert Ham saw it as "a literary vision of political upheaval in Northern England". Rolling Stone merely saw it as Smith shouting out his hometown. Reception In contemporary reviews, Johnny Waller, reviewing Grotesque for Sounds, hailed the album as "rock n' roll with a conscience". Critic Robert Christgau described it simply as "poetry readings with two-chord backing". NME writer Graham Lock was more reserved in his praise, deeming it the Fall's "least flawed album" while suggesting that the band had yet to reach their full potential. Chris Westwood of Record Mirror viewed it as a disappointment, finding that the band's cynical outlook had become predictable. Retrospective assessments were more positive. In his review of Grotesque for AllMusic, Ned Raggett opined that the band "really started hitting its stride" with the album, commenting on its "sharp rockabilly leads and random art rock racket". In The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, Joe Gross cites Grotesque as "the first truly great Fall album". In Stereogum, Robert Ham saw the band "hitting their creative stride as songwriters and players" on the album, stating, "Some of it is still very tattered around the edges, but the majority of it finds that unique static charge that made their '80s work so compelling." Trouser Press viewed the album as "[removing] the Fall even further from the world of easy listening", describing the tracks as "mostly one-or-two-chord jams played too slowly to be hardcore, but structured similarly". Grotesque was included in Al Spicer's 1999 book Rock: 100 Essential CDs, in which he described it as "among the Fall's most powerful statements, and recorded by the most inventive of the band's constantly evolving line-ups". In a 2018 article for Billboard, Geeta Dayal listed Grotesque as the Fall's fifth-best album, noting its "slightly cleaner sound" and citing "The N.W.R.A." and "The Container Drivers" as highlights. In 2020, Rolling Stone included Grotesque (After the Gramme) in its "80 Greatest albums of 1980" list, praising the band for its "ability to craft impossibly catchy songs that simultaneously sound like they're shaking apart at the seams". Reissues Grotesque was first