Southpaw – Brooklyn, New York, 2nd June 2006

There's a review of The Fall's gig last June at Southpaw in Brooklyn at the NY Sun which has taught me several words I'd never heard before:


A Humble Barfly's Contentment
By BENJAMIN LYTAL
June 5, 2006

No serious person can pretend to relish the behavior of Mark E. Smith, famed leader of the Fall, the influential and jangly post-punk band. On his latest tour, which came to a close on Saturday at the Brooklyn club Southpaw, Smith poured beer on his tour manager's head and pulled a corkscrew on his bassist. Onstage in Phoenix, Justin Williams, the frontman of opening band the Talk, retaliated by throwing a banana peel at Smith's head. Smith's own band then quit the tour.

The Fall has gone through many personnel changes, always preserving a sarcastic, catch-as-catch-can spirit that, while not identical to Smith's incidental rascality, certainly contextualizes it. Yet something about the band's oeuvre is straightforward and wholesome.

At Southpaw, Smith's new band came onstage with a tentative air. The bassist, a tall young man with a cuddlylooking beard, might have been born at around the time Smith first formed the Fall, in 1977. The guitar player sported black curls flattened against the side of his face. As one audience member later said, this was the Fall gone Williamsburg.

Smith's loyal third wife, Elena Poulou, looked more confident. A noted beauty, Poulou has not had as strong a hand in the Fall as Smith's first wife, Bennington grad Brix Smith. In the mid-1980s, Brix took the Fall in a more melodic direction, leading to some of the most celebrated of the band's 24 LPs. Poulou seems content to finger the keyboard.

After a moment's hesitation, Smith himself came onstage, wearing a trim leather jacket and a neatly tucked-in shirt. He looked like Andy Capp. Frail and almost cute, Smith gripped his microphone with both hands, nearly obscuring his small, frog-like face. Smith once famously intoned the words "All those whose mind entitle themselves, and whose main entitle is themselves, shall feel the wrath of my bombast." Twenty years later, Smith does not seem physically capable of bombast, but his voice is strong. His signature barker's drone,the extended voicing he gives to the last syllable of almost every word,washed over the Brooklyn audience like an air raid siren.

On "Pacifying Joint," a song from the Fall's latest album, "Fall Heads Roll," Smith made the refrain "pacifying joint" sound like a conversational remark, an explanation, a baleful announcement, a shrug, an obtuse slang, and, inevitably, an arty code word. On his first record, Smith announced that the three Rs were "repetition, repetition, repetition." He artfully elides words so that their sound and meaning change over the course of a song. In Brooklyn, that elision sounded more like a kind of lovable, arrogant laziness of the tongue. Everyone knew that Smith was saying something smart, and he knew that they knew.

Smith's confidence took on a paternal form whenever he acknowledged the bouncy rhythms of his young bandmates.His occasional head nod seemed to have more to do with approval than with keeping time. At one point, he leaned his own microphone stand over into the drummer's kit, as if quoting other, messier shows while also paying the drummer an almost fatherly compliment.

But there was no banter, and the band moved quickly from one song to another, almost all from "Fall Heads Roll." The new band couldn't reproduce the electronic dash of the recorded "I Can Hear the Grass Grow." A cover of an old psychedelic number,"I Can Hear the Grass Grow" sounds neither nostalgic nor ironic, but simply goodnatured coming from the Fall. It recalls their earlier hit cover, also sunny, of the Kinks's "Victoria."

Indeed, the Fall's long history of lineup changes and relentless production belies the cynicism of Smith's lyrics. Crapulous but marked by hard work, Smith's career is an essay in resourcefulness. If Saturday's show proves the fungibility of the band's identity, it also proves the competence of this seemingly erratic wild man.

Smith's only sign of personal power was his interest in his bandmates' microphones. Several times during the stage he took a second microphone, from the guitarist or from his wife's keyboard, and held it, along with his own, in front of his small face. During the encore, performing the slow and powerful new song "Blindness," about the blind British politician David Blunkett, he smashed down some of Poulou's keyboard keys.

Mark E. Smith has made a career of making messes and cleaning them up. In person, he looks like the picture of a humble barfly, and his kindly but distant attitude to his bandmates, along with his calm, droning vocals, all bespeak contentment.


Who uses words like elide (to omit (a vowel, consonant, or syllable) in pronunciation) or fungible (interchangeable) in a gig review (or anywhere)? I suspect Benjamin Lytal knows that he's saying something smart, and he knows that we know.

Also, "I Can Hear the Grass Grow" is psychedelic???? Who knew?

I've also been listening to the album Darker My Love by the band of the same name (whose guitarist - Tim Presley - and bassist - Rob Barbato - are now the guitarist and bassist in The Fall 'squad') and I must say I'm quite impressed.

It has a dark, melancholic, fuzzy, dense, nouveau-psychedelic rock feel to it, with some indie/kraut touches that are not at all unpleasant. I think these lads may have been an inspired choice to be co-opted into the squad.

That's exactly what I was thinking when I was there. I was thinking "Man, I can't believe how artfully MES is eliding tonight. I wasn't sure how it would sound without Ben, Steve, and Spence, but beardy and friends really prove the fungibility of the Fall's line up. This is nothing if not fungible."

Yes - and what about "Cute"?

(That's a lovely frog, by the way.)

Quite the review from a probable English major. But you did know what
"the Fall gone Williamsburg" meant?....that's impressive...

No, I have no idea what that means. What does it mean?

No, I have no idea what that means. What does it mean?

Williamsburg is a neighborhood in Brooklyn home to a lot of hipsters.

Wikipedia has a nice summary.

Williamsburg may indeed have a lot of hipsters but it traditionally
has been a Brooklyn neighborhood with a large population
of Hasidim whose male members are forbidden to cut their hair
in front of their ears so they have long curls down the side of
their faces where Elvis sported his sideburns.
This is what I think the anon. commentator meant upon seeing
the band member's curls on the side of his face.

If MES had assembled an all-Hasid lineup, I'd be impressed.

you'd be impressed & the band would be better dressed! Of course, many would think he'd hired Amish musicians....

Ah yes, the Williamsburg comment makes sense now. Looking at pics of the lads at their myspace page I can see why the reviewer would make that reference (bizarre though it is) as they do look a bit Hassidic. Should fit in well in Manchester.