Brix Smith

Best known for her work in The Fall at the time when they were perhaps the most powerful and influential anti-authoritarian postpunk band in the world - This Nation's Saving Grace, The Wonderful and Frightening World Of ... - Brix spent ten years in the band before a violent disintegration led to her exit and the end of her marriage with Mark E Smith.

But Brix's story is much more than rock 'n' roll highs and lows in one of the most radically dysfunctional bands around. Growing up in the Hollywood Hills in the '60s in a dilapidated pink mansion her life has taken her from luxury to destitution, from the cover of the NME to waitressing in California, via the industrial wasteland of Manchester in the 1980s.

Considered by many to be the first Riot Grrl, the multi-faceted musician, singer and important figure in the worlds of fashion, TV and acting has described her 2023 album Valley Of The Dolls - which features special guests including Susanna Hoffs from The Bangles and Siobhan Fahey of Bananarama and Shakespears Sister - as sounding like a cross between The Breeders and Hole with an atmosphere that's 'very dystopian California'.