LIVE: Moon Duo, Heaven

Tags

Circles, Cold Fear, Creepin', I been gone, Moon Duo, Occult Architecture Vol 1, Ripley Johnson, Sanae Yamada, Shadow of the sun, The Death Set, Thieves

http://www.music-news.com/review/UK/12449/Live/Moon-Duo

London Charing Cross’s Heaven is the celestial venue for a night on the (rep)tiles, underground caverns loom beneath the arches, the catacombs exhibiting a triumvirate of spectral silhouettes on stage.

Psyche-o-geographers of the inner mind, travellers of the (experi)mental terrain, this tower of power trio delivered a (s)trident bunch of fives from new LP, Occult Architecture Vol. 1; a thumping knuckle sandwich to the façade of the low-vibrational energy vampires, the empathy-bereft submerged, the surreptitious secret hand shakers and movers, subterranean domesick crews that wreak havoc and misery from their exalted positions of twisted hierarchy. Out Demons out!

OA 1 delineates the hidden structures that exert esoteric control, the (un)seen architecture that influences mood and alters behaviour, the occult site/sights that hamper and impair our sub/unconscious selves.

The technicolour visuals feature pyramids (those top-down hierarchical control systems and bottom-up aspirational scales), obelisks and the all-seeing eye, that watching, prying, intruding orb of observation; malevolent, malicious and malignant. Beware CCTVoyeurism.

‘The Death Set’ kicks off proceedings, a Stooges-indebted fuzz-racket replete with syn-thetic sorcery that segues into the haunting electro-throbbing ‘Cold Fear’ a hypersonic tour de force in the vein of early Human League. No inter-track chit-chat is required as the clattering cacophonic ‘Creepin’ tramples in: motorik-disko par excellence.

The archive-dérive throws out the hypnoidal trance-dance of ‘I been gone’ and drone-zone glam-stomping ‘Free Action’ (off 2012’s Circles) and the narco-klepto ‘Thieves’ (from 2015’s Shadow of the Sun).

Symbology abounds in ‘Sevens’ (off forthcoming follow-up Occult.Architecture. Vol. 2) continuing the esoteric theme, the antidote to the misanthropic parasitic perverted is here. Initiate yourself.

Culminating in a rousing rendition of The Stooges ‘No Fun’ the circle is complete, the hex has been (re)cast. The fightback is on.

Evil lives: look around, dig the sound, get wise and open your eyes.

Adam Ant, Brixton Academy, 10th June 2016

Tags

Adam and the Ants, Adam Ant, Antmusic, Car Trouble, Goody Two Shoes, Kings of the wild frontier, Marco PIrroni, Prince Charming, Stand and Deliver

Adam Ant is the only artist to successfully straddle the punk, post-punk and pop landscapes with the latter becoming his wondrous kingdom for two years (1980 -1982).

Second LP Kings of the Wild Frontier released in November 1980 was notable for many things, for one the deployment of two drummers, inspired by the ‘Burundi Beat’. (Along with appropriating the Ants Mark I Malcolm McLaren would also ‘Zerox’ this idea for the nascent Bow Wow Wow).

Piqued, he retreated, reinvented and retaliated by applying a white stripe across his nose and feathers in his hair, distilling the spirit of the warrior/outlaw. His next move was to enlist ex-Banshee Marco Pirroni, together they set about producing this game-changing album, kick-starting the ‘Antmania’ that would enrapture girls and boys alike making Ant the biggest ‘pop’ star since Bolan (and arguably the last).

Meshing the drum-twosome with Morricone-twanging guitars the effect is mesmerising, an order to believe in a panoramic technicolour future instead of monochromatic mundane present (then as now). In one fell swoop Ant had arrived, cult outlier no more, the ‘Ant Invasion’ spearheaded by this new King.

Tonight is theatre as spectacle, pop as artifice, art as populace, image and innovation, dreams and desires realised as Ant, effortless style and enduring substance, (reminding Johnny Depp where his affected raffishness emanated from) commanding adoration and demanding attention. Fine of voice and expertly backed by the extraordinarily coiffed Jola (‘an albino Coldstream Guard’ was heard quipped) on one drum kit.

Featuring the lacerating and searing ‘Antmusic’ this self-referential manifesto is a powerful reminder of when music used to disdainfully look at its history, the generational urge to ‘rip it up and start again’. Ant’s instruction to ‘unplug the jukebox’ (with its anachronistic 1950s association) ‘and do us all favour, that music’s lost its taste so try another flavour’ at odds in these genreless and contextless hyper-consumptive times.

The prescient neo-liberalist anthem ‘Dog Eat Dog’ with its ‘succeed at all costs, do ANYTHING to get to the next level’ socially atomising mantra is depressingly topical. Sounding like The Shadows on peyote the titular ‘Kings of the Wild Frontier’ proclaims ‘a new Royal family, a wild nobility, we are the family’, 35 years on if only that was the case. The song seeks identification with the plight of the indigenous Native Americans, the last stand against the oppressive colonialist Uncle Sam super-structure, underneath the pale face we are all ‘red-skinned’. The (I)PC brigade would go ape with this nowadays.

‘Press Darlings’ is the barbed riposte to the cultural gatekeepers and vultural tastemakers that dared to question his ideals and vison, their pithy words keeping him at arms’ length from his expanding public. He who laughs last …

Hits follow: ‘Christian Dior’, ‘Goody Two Shoes’ and the ever outstanding ‘Car Trouble’ (from 1979’s Dirk wears white sox) with its (sexually metaphorical/metaphorically sexual) claim that ‘you don’t need anything after an ice cream’. Quite.

In due course the dynamic duo appear, 1981’s ubiquitous ‘Prince Charming’ with its ever reassuring refrain to society’s refused of ‘ridicule is nothing to be scared of’ and the dandy-highwayman anthem ‘Stand and Deliver’ both inspire a unanimous sing-along, still exquisite postscripts to the Kings LP, seamless and timeless.

The enigmatic figure on stage remains the pin-up that graced millions of walls. For ‘antmaniacs’ memories are made of this.

The Stranglers LIVE Brixton 11th March 2016

Tags

5 MInutes, Baz Warne, Black and White, Dave Greenfield, Death and Night and blood (Yukio), Enough Time, Jet Black, Jim Macaulay, JJ Burnel, Nice 'n' Sleazy, No More Heroes, Nuclear Device, Sweden, The Stranglers, Waltzin' Black

It has become de rigueur for classic albums to be resurrected and re-evaluated, recontexualised in exercises of nostalgic trips down Memory Lane. Not the Men in Black. Having resolutely remained together and continued to produce new material they are not defined and confined by their past like other bands, this recollection is also an opportunity to breathe new life into less established songs.

Black and white, light and shade, night and day, good and bad, no grey areas, the four-piece set against the bright white stage, monochromatic and magnificent: Burnel, Greenfield, Warne (minus drummer Jet Black since last year, drum stool occupied by Jim) Macaulay.

Black and White from 1978 was the quartet’s first album comprised of new material, not fragments (re)shaped from 1974 – 1977. The album is a sonic document of the austere climate of a year that was to culminate in the ‘Winter of Discontent’ and an articulation of how earlier success was followed by a backlash, a show of strength in the face of criticism and antagonism, responding to accusations of misogyny and violence by writing misogynistic and violent songs. Interpret that!

Entering as always to the greatest intro ever – the haunting carousel ‘Waltzin’ Black’ they launch at breakneck pace through an experimental album that addresses esoterica, technology, alienation, paranoia and identity arguably creating ‘post-punk’, their influence later evident in Gang of Four and Joy Division.

Opener ‘Tank’ is a jibe at the (al)lure of the armed forces, the career path for the recipients of the Monarch’s shilling, bidding Imperial wars of territorial attrition. ‘Sweden’ is based on former singer Hugh Cornwell’s time in Sweden in the early 70s, the ennui of the remote expanse: ‘too much time too little to do’ and also the band’s altercation with the ‘raggare’ (Swedish youth group).

The onomatopoeic ‘Nice ‘n’ Sleazy’, the filthiest gutter thump imaginable cascades imperiously detailing the band’s hook-up and shakedown with Amsterdam’s Hell’s Angels. Without pause the tracks pound on. The prescient ‘Hey! Rise of the robots’ with its ominous warning of sentient machines devoid of compassion or emotion, tech-addicted drones of ‘Metal fashioned into man, no ticker I could drop a tear’, man as machine and vice versa, prophesy and fears realised.

‘Death and Night and blood (Yukio)’ is an example of Burnel’s cerebral eye; the tale of the contradictory Japanese Yukio Mishima, a married homosexual who after forming his own ‘defence force’ took on the army, a decision that ended in his suicide. It’s certainly far from the gibberish of Coldplay or Gallagher’s nonesens-ory overload.

The LP closes with ‘Enough Time’ its Morse Code climax decoded as ‘SOS. This is planet Earth. We are fucked. Please advise’ evidence of their belief in extra-terrestrial life as there must be more than ‘this’. Bacharach and David’s ‘Walk on by’ complemented by the four pronged solo section featuring Greenfield’s ‘Light my fire’ referencing organ-gasm is greeted rapturously.

Minimal flab-chat is followed by a greatest hits/forgotten masterpieces, ‘Mercury Rising’ from 2012’s Giants, ‘I’ve been wild’ from 2004’s Norfolk Coast before the diptych of the incendiary ‘Nuclear Device’ merges into the blitzkrieg of ‘5 Minutes’. Never ones to entirely conform to expectations the inflammatory identity crisis that is ‘(I feel like a) Wog’ crashes in. Burnel’s autobiographical tale of being ‘other’ due to his Gallic roots, his struggles with assimilation and ‘their’ issues of acceptance.

The encore builds towards the timeless ‘No More Heroes’, bookending this visceral performance.

Literate, inveterate and irreverent: often imitated, never bettered.

LIVE: The Stranglers – Brixton Academy, London 11.03.16

The Sisters of Mercy Live -Roundhouse, 18th October 2015

Tags

Alice, Andrew Eldritch, Dr Jeep, Lucretia, Temple of Love, The Sisters of Mercy, Vision Thing

There exists a world where music and its attendant culture is banal, its citizens bereft of wit, humour and independent intellectual innovation. A world of exhumed tropes and styles, passionless drones interfacing with screens, a world of weedy, reedy saps strumming about dead dogs and mislaid phones. Grim place, yeah? It doesn’t have to be this way because the enlightened plane has Andrew Eldritch and the Sisters of Mercy. Avatar of art and intellectual love god flanked by two guitarists and the drum machine. Sparse, spartan and spectacular.

In this post-ironic, end of days culture-dirge epoch some bands wander by mistake. Eldritch is the eternal brooding mystery, the enigma laconically strolling round the stage dressed like he’s just returned from the arboreal climes of ‘Nam, the apocalypse of now and then’s Colonel Kurtz, battle-scarred and memory-worn. His public remain on the precipice, by playing so infrequently he only intensifies the intrigue and desire for MORE. The road of excess leads to the palace of sub-culture vultures. There are many.

For the last f*ckin’ time, I’m NOT Gary Glitter!

Transcending categories, labels and definition, Sisters are the last form of symbolic resistance, they will not be recuperated, they will continually defy the norms, this is style without bricolage, only … come on, you’ve read this far and the word ‘goth’ is on the tip of your tongue, at the forefront of your brain, a catch-all term for all things black. All things gloomy. Snakebite and patchouli.  All things introspective. Lazy, lazy, lazy. This isn’t the aforementioned world remember, this is enlightenment. Read on.

Purveyors of down-bracing dance music, cerebrally appealing art that stimulates, that challenges, forces you to question AND think, a singular action that’s a cardinal sin amongst some ‘acts’, the dross that engulfs existence like the face-hugging alien in … erm … Alien, the succubus that feeds off the mediocre and proffers the dreary in recompense. Lose-lose.

‘Vision Thing’s ‘motherfucker in a motorcade’ is either a barbed comment at those representatives of (all) organised religions and its earthly emissaries or the assassination of JFK plus a take on Bush père’s ‘Vision Thing’ comment regarding his perceived lack of an understanding in taking over the reins of Uncle Sam Corp. Just do what THEY say, George. The sound of the New World Order in under five minutes.

1982’s still electrifying ‘Alice’, inspired by Go ask Alice’s titular drug fiend, an anonymous diary warning of the perils of drug addiction and promiscuity as means of averting reality leading to spiritual decline and ultimate demise.

The songs keep coming with the pounding and ever-effervescent ‘Lucretia, my reflection’ the darkest love song imaginable, a tour de force that warns of the ‘roar of the Big Machine’, be it the techno-super-structure, the (old ways) of the power of the printed word or the new colonialism of robo-warfare. Literalism does not frequent these parts, interpretation is within the individual’s capability. Do YOU get it?

‘Dr Jeep’s depressingly still-relevant critique of the world arms traders, those Machiavellian masters of destruction and rebuilding, the Teflon merchants of misery playing the masses off against each other, forever fomenting division and death.

Inadvertently inspiring Team America? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1mlCPMYtPk

The set continued at breakneck pace with arguably the band’s best known song, 1983’s ‘Temple of Love’ a sonic onslaught that underwent a makeover in 1992 by adding Indian singer Ofra Haza’s esoteric wailings to proceedings thus propelling it to number 3 in the UK . Dancefloor electro-rock at its optimum.

The set reminds (if it needed doing) that this sound influenced late-era Depeche Mode and continues to permeate ‘modern’ music, from the nu-metal antics of Blink 182 to Suede’s latest offering, there is light amongst the dark. Majesty reigns.

Eldritch stays true to the old dictum: ‘always keep them wanting MORE’. With that, he was gone, retreating into the smoke and strobe vanishing for another unspecified amount of time. There are no substitutes. The truth never hides, it only appears at times of need. That time is NOW.

The Montecristos LIVE

Tags

Flaunt It, Gigslutz, Giorgio Moroder, Love Missile F1 11, Marc Almond, Neal X, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, The Montecristos, Tomoyasu Hotei

http://www.gigslutz.co.uk/live-montecristos-wilton-hall-london-26-03-2015/

Arch provocateurs Sigue Sigue Sputnik gate-crashed the pop world in 1986 with the Top 3 hit ‘Love Missile F1-11 and subsequent album Flaunt It produced by Giorgio Moroder. The band embodied a wry attitude to the ‘biz’ and produced an album notorious for having advertising in between songs, a scathing critique of the insidious avarice and commercialism inherent; a post-modern summation of the then 30 year old industry.

The extravagantly attired group put the art into artifice and the mode into post-modern before a disastrous union with (s)hitmakers Stock Aitken and Waterman saw them consigned to the dustbin of history with subsequent internal disputes ruling out any reformation.

Aside from being part of Marc Almond’s touring band guitarist Neal X showcased his new ensemble The Montecristos with a special one-off gig to launch debut album ‘Born to Rock ‘n’ Roll at Wilton Hall. Promising an extravaganza of thrills, spills, music, magic and mayhem and special guests the band contains trumpet, saxophone and double bass and is compered by X looking like a Rocka-Billy Smart in top hat and tails. It didn’t disappoint.

‘Atlantic Surf’ introduces the band, an instrumental redolent of Dick Dale’s brooding benchmark ‘Miserlou’ all in keeping with X’s roots and inspirations quickly followed by ‘Born to Rock and Roll’ is a deft nod to Eddie Cochran, from the riff down to the “take me to the church … and Satan’s in a Zoot suit” imagery.

‘Hotel Pelirocco’ is named after Brighton’s ‘boutique rock and roll hotel’, a garish themed Disneyfied hell-hole for any aspiring wannabes who wish to surround themselves with ersatz echoes. The (Made in) Chelsea Hotel. The elephant in this circus is Sputnik, we are told that X has now reconciled with his past and launches into a Stray Cattish rendition of ‘Hey Jayne Mansfield Superstar!’, his repetitive riffs a reminder of the effective simplicity of his former band’s oeuvre. ‘Brand New Cadillac’ sees synth-pop-sex-dwarf himself, Marc Almond, take the mic for a barnstorming airing of Vince Taylor’s 1960 rock cornerstone. Almond’s presence allows X to relax as he settles into a faithful and rollicking version if highlighting X’s vocal hesitancy.

‘Badfinger Twang’ is an instrumental which is a cross between The Cramps’ classic ‘Human Fly’ and Duane Eddy’s ‘Peter Gunn’ albeit with backing dancers that evoke the opening cringe-worthy credits to Strictly Come Dancing. The ever-potent ‘Love Missile F1-11’ is delivered in a rockabilly style that merges into Sympathy for the Devil and back again, X marks his spot.

‘Dirty little low life’ is another ditty about the little town flirts who wreak havoc on the emotions of the weak-willed male featuring a great recurring riff backed by nagging horny action. It’s the standout song on the LP. #Selfie is the only concession to ‘now’ in title and sentiment albeit set to a bluesy chug it is an ode to the narcissistic predilection for capturing and transmitting images of undress “you’re a picture of affection … just a picture that is all … I didn’t give my number so you could make a call … baby … send a selfie to myyyyy phone”

The band encore with the classics ‘C’mon Everybody’ and ‘Great Balls of Fire with long-time collaborator Tomoyasu Hotei, singer-songwriter and creator of the Kill Bill theme song. If at times it feels like hearing a good wedding band replete with classics this is in keeping with X’s past, a love letter to history and his place within it. A pleasing return.

The Montecristos, count on ‘em …

Psyence, Hoxton Bar and Grill, 7th January 2015

Tags

Chemicals for breakfast, Found a job, Psyence, Talking Heads, Zebra

http://www.gigslutz.co.uk/psyence-live-hoxton-bar-grill-london/

Psyche-rock Stoke four-piece Psyence are here to guide us to a better consciousness, their future noise is the soundtrack to a remembered past littered with debris and flotsam. Mediocrity is ubiquitous. Too much product is all bluster, blood and no guts, attitude with no heart. Artifice and fakery reign supreme rendering the true seekers in danger of obscurity. No more.

Exuding poise not pose, presence not pretence, this is no fancy dress whimsy archetype-psyche (e.g. Temples) those who are kitted out in the regulation garb and operate within existing decades long boundaries, deploying weary tropes and signifiers, staid and safe, preferring conformity in uniformity. Psyence not only pose ask the questions they proffer the solutions.

Their magnificence is revealed in the spaces in-between, the nuances and diversions a masterclass in patience. It is impossible to second guess their next move. The heavy-pop grooves mixed with swirling effects situate them with rock titans such as The Groundhogs and Iron Butterfly.

Criminally low down on the bill nevertheless they tear it up in front of the buzzing throng. ‘Zebra’ is all woozy wah-wah undercut with a thuddering backline, an ode to going psycho-doo-lally. It has a faint reminder of Talking Heads’ ‘Found a job’.

‘Chemicals for breakfast’ typifies the propensity for detours, confounding the listener and spectator just when it seems they’ve got it sussed. A lolloping bassline snakes in and out with the attendant noise clinging on for dear life. The soundtrack to a breakdown you entertain.

These free radicals are the best thing to come from the potteries since clay. Theoretically, hypothetically and psyentifically this quartet provide the equilibrium and friction this inert nation requires.

Up yours, D:Ream’s Brian Cox!

Street Sounds 2nd Anniversary Party feat. The Backhanders

Tags

Garry Bushell, Street Sounds, THe Backhanders

http://www.gigslutz.co.uk/street-sounds-2nd-anniversary-party-feat-backhanders/

The legendary 12 Bar in Soho’s Denmark Street (soon to be demolished in the name of progress) played host to a celebration of two years of Street Sounds, the magazine with the scourge of the music press cognoscenti, Garry Bushell, at the helm. Champion of the much misunderstood ‘Oi’ movement and the man who prophesised that “In the future all music will be light entertainment” was also one of the first to write extensively about popular culture in the national press and to foresee its dominance over the nation for better and worse. (Visionary polymath Bushell is also starring as an abusive alpha-male in the forthcoming ‘Brit-grit-flick’ A Fool’s Circle written, produced and starring Suzanne Seddon, who was also in attendance.)

Manchester band The Backhanders, with their mod cuts and scally attire supplied the live entertainment. Their Joe Strummer-inspired song ‘Campfire’ is a great, rocking number, reminiscent of a ‘2-4-6-8’ by The Tom Robinson Band. They also played a cover of The Doors’ ‘People Are Strange’, which started out all classic 60s psyche until the vocals went all Manc-standard Gallagher/Meighan, too whiney and all-shouty. C’mon lads, progress not no-gress. (Fun fact: the band are managed by renowned gate-crasher and subject of the eponymous Black Grape song, ‘Fatneck’.)

In keeping with the London feel, free pie and mash was laid on courtesy of the London Pie and Mash Company. Finger liquorin’ tasty and coming soon to a town near you. The crowd was a heady mix of ages, from aesthetes to try-hards and what surely has to be Keith Lemon’s template: bewildering, and in many ways in keeping with Bushell’s nightmarish premonitions.

Joseph Coward Live, The Barfly 26th August 2014

Tags

Joseph Coward, The Barfly

http://www.gigslutz.co.uk/joseph-coward-live-barfly-camden-26-08-14/

Religion, crises of faith and (wo)man’s fraught relationship with sin have long been prominent themes in music; from gospel and soul with their communing with him upstairs to death metal and its passion for the antichrist. In that vein comes an émigré from Brentwood, Essex and an escapee from evangelists, ‘The New Frontiers’ and boy, does it show.

Godswallop pervades Joseph Coward’s every fibre, dominating every song and illustrating someone who may never quite reconcile his deal with God. Much like his clear influence, Morrissey, Coward’s is an awkward relationship with imposed thought systems and how the skin he’s in perennially disappoints (‘Perfect Peanut Girl’s ‘embarrassment of bones’).

Pale, sallow, shy and reserved he resembles a young Steve Winwood. With arms defensively crossed whenever there is a lull in his involvement, he isn’t quite sure where to look or to place his body meekly addressing the audience with gratitude.

It’s just him and his guitarist providing sparse arrangements, all the more for Coward’s voice to scale the heights and lows. His songs are littered with arresting themes: isolation, feeling inconsequential and inadequate, excommunication and rejection, ever vivid and visceral.

The superlative ‘Thin’ with its soft guitar flourish borrowed from The Smiths’ ‘Heaven knows I’m miserable now’ and lolloping bass has sonorous vocals with confessional lyrics that stream from the tongue, plaintive and acidic. ‘I’m the water, you make me ripple, how’d you like to wrestle with a sexual cripple, I am young and thin and I am going down’ also brings to mind another Smiths song ‘Accept Yourself’ with its ‘I am sick I am dull and I am plain’ lament.

‘Idle Boy’ has a recurring riff that brings to mind Dead Kennedys’ ‘Holiday in Cambodia’ and has Coward again bemoaning how his ‘pale and idle body is betraying me’ (this time reminding of Billy Bragg’s ‘Sexuality’; a rumoured dig at Morrissey). ‘Honey, please’ has echoes 80s jingle-janglers The June Brides with its existential pleading ‘why did you do it, why did you make me, why did you do it, why am I born?’… ‘and I know God hates me and he hates you too’

In an interview with The Quietus in 2011 Coward said ‘I have no interest in trying to be nice. My one interest in life is really being honest, that’s the nature of my work as well. Absolute truth, that’s the nature of art’. On this performance and with lyrics such as ‘all human life is bile’ there’s a clear honesty and struggle for truth (with) in him.
Would have been nice to heard him with more instrumentation, but, what a voice.

For all Coward’s allusions and pretensions to Morrissey, he’s no ordinary boy.

Sleaford Mods, The Lexington 18th July 2014

Tags

Grimmy, Kasabian, Noel Gallagher, Sleaford Mods, The Dimmer Twins, The Lexington

This sold out gig would appear to be the antithesis of everything this duo stand for. Hipsters with sleeve tattoos, wispy beards destined to be on the cutting room floor by Christmas, imbibers of nothing but craft ale.

However, the spirit of Sleaford Mods highlights the insidious nature of ‘class’ distinctions and lazy stereotypes, quite simply there are those that have and there are more that don’t; social strata are aspirational prisons.

This is the sound of dreams crushed dating back to 1979 and the evaporation of any dreams of progress since. Unless you adhere to the individualistic, moneyed edict of the nightmarish American Dream, the ‘fuck all others’ mentality, then this is your call to arms.

Profane yet urbane orator Jason Williamson just has to get these exasperated expletives out or he will explode. Dissatisfaction with the electoral shitstem, a state of address spat out at breakneck ferocity. Addressing themes such as a necessary societal conscious awakening, crap food, jumped up middle managers, ineffective line managers, the ubiquity of joblessness, the banality of office work (‘… workstations, forced to engage in flirtatious conversation’ in ‘Fizzy’), acts that attempt to position themselves in the established lineage by adopting certain clothes, hair dos, referencing and name dropping those from the instantaneous ADHD cultural splat; cool today gone tomorrow.

The Dimmer Twins meet longtime fans Abbott and Costello

Williamson’s scabrous, controlled rage is littered with the blowing of raspberries at the state of things, he has vocalised the disenfranchised, pointing out false idols and how their days of plenty are numbered. The veil has slipped, social media has shown the Emperors and Empresses to be naked and always have been, they wear the attire of the elite, the arist-rock-racy in their gilded palaces hanging out with Grimmy and his Chiltern Firehouse posse trading in obsequious back-slapping and ‘top bantz’.

Grimmy and acolyte keep it real

This is music with context and content, articulating and rhapsodising NOW. This is not music by rote or committee. This is Spartan anti-rock mythology music that couldn’t be less enthralled by the past as evinced by ‘Pubic Hair Limited’. Built around the obligatory doom-laden deep bass line it decries the perpetual residue of the past, trading on memories (theirs and ours) in an oath of fealty:

Who gives a fuck about yesterday’s heroes
Who seem to think they’re still today’s heroes
It’s not a pyramid you’re not a fucking Pharaoh
I’m sick of all these pissy sellouts
Ignoring actuality
That everything that made them great
Lost its validity

This is a performance sans performance, devoid of the tropes of showmanship, stripped of artifice, the ever laconic Andrew Fearn rocks gently from side to side at the controls of his history box, pint in hand. All music history appears to be contained in there, every bass line, every riff, a guitar lick here and a synth stab there (‘Tiswas’ with its Kraftwerkian flourish in particular).

These pair have been round the block and are the antidote to the mantra that music’s for the young or the very old, the PR driven colonisation of new consumers or consumers of a ‘new’ where everything is ‘great’ or ‘seminal’. Two 40+ males articulating universal themes of suffrage and dissatisfaction and collective memories of Doug McClure films, Spit the Dog and Kevin Bacon’s footwork (‘Tied up in Nottz’).

With a huge following in post-industrial parts of Europe, the feelings of disillusionment resonate. We all receive the same message: be aware and combat all attempts at divide and rule; social cohesion and unity is the solution as far-fetched and unobtainable as it appears.

Bar a solitary ‘thanks’ there is no interaction between act and audience; this is ego-free, encore-free and above all exhilarating. Talk of the town and raging against the machine, these current press darlings are too long in the tooth and savvy to fall victim to the charmless seduction of the trend chasers, the fad men, the Iphonies.

With talk of them going ‘full-time’ it will be interesting to see if the anger dissipates and the targets alter. There’s more chance those in the firing line will increase.

Watch out.

The Fall, Under the Bridge, 10th June 2014

Tags

Gigslutz, Mark E. Smith, The Fall, Under the Bridge

Mark E. Smith is The Fall.

Mark E. Smith formed the band in Prestwich, Greater Manchester in 1976.

Mark E. Smith has always been The Fall.

Mark E. Smith will always be The Fall.

Mark E. Smith has released 30 studio albums and numerous compilations and live albums.

Mark E. Smith is the ultimate Svengali, orchestrator, dictator, puppeteer, agitator, overlord whispering in the ears of his ‘group’ to tweak it, or ‘turn it up’. They comply. As any member of The Fall always has; otherwise they are out.

Mark E. Smith is a stumbling, rambling shambling incoherent drunk. If you passed him in the street his hectoring would annoy, yet put to the outstanding musicianship he currently has at his disposal it transforms into art.

Mark E. Smith has two drummers who create a cacophony of beats, thuds and thumps. Last year’s ‘The Remainderer’ is a thunderous curtain raiser.

Mark E. Smith almost takes someone’s eye out with his microphone. He carries on oblivious.

Mark E. Smith has a goatee. I know; it beggars belief.

Mark E. Smith has been and continues to be a huge influence on the music scene.

Mark E. Smith and The Fall are playing Under the Bridge, Chelsea Football Club’s stadium. The venue is like the club it’s under and brings to mind the band’s 2011 album ‘Ersatz GB’. The place is cynically festooned with photographs with blurb, memorabilia, old concert posters designed to look ‘authentic’ and a large mosaic of John Lennon in the Men’s. Like the age we live in, one where you can ‘own’ the entire back catalogue of an artist within minutes, this is history for cheats. No endeavour, this is fakery of the highest order. Great sound in there, mind.

Mark E. Smith is not a fake. Mark E. Smith is an astute cultural commentator, a poet and misanthrope.

Mark E. Smith is sarcastic, sneering and sloshed.

Mark E. Smith shocks himself into action with a rampaging cover of The Big Bopper’s ‘White Lightning’. It threatens to sober him up, it’s as if a switch goers off and he clicks into gear. The song has a hint of Duane Eddy’s ‘Peter Gunn’ and is emblematic of Smith’s influences with his own idiosyncratic input thrown into the mix.

Mark E. Smith’s wife and keyboard player, Elena Palou plays whilst wearing what appears to be half a parachute. It does not affect her ability to play.

Mark E. Smith encounters a stray from ‘Made in Chelsea’ who clambers on stage. Dressed in pastel colours with decks shoes, he is quickly ushered back into the bewildered crowd.

Mark E. Smith rouses once more for a cover of the Sonics’ ‘Strychnine’ which again highlights the brilliant band currently trading as The Fall.

Mark E. Smith, absent from the stage for the final three songs performs from afar. Encoring with ‘Theme from Sparta FC’ the band play on with Smith’s badgering, cryptic words beamed in. Lasting just over an hour it’s a mad, bad and sad experience. In the words of another famous Mancunian ‘That joke isn’t funny anymore.’

Mark E. Smith will be doing the same thing tonight. And the next.

Mark E. Smith remains as John Peel uttered ‘Always different … always the same.’