I actually think The Fall are so revered in the UK because of an underlying anti-American/nationalist undercurrent taking hold within Britain at the moment. People seem to like the sheer Englishness of The Fall, as a kind of cryptic antidote to what they see as the creeping saturation of American cultural forces onto its shores. I wouldn't say that The Fall, or more specifically MES, are themselves anti-American, but their emphasis on local slang and national eccentricities provide certain fans with a sense that the band somehow represent a kind of English contrarianism.
If anything their snowballing cult in the UK is a demonstration that the underlying anti-American rationale that inspired Brit-Pop continues on, albeit in a slightly less brash way.
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