The Fall - The Duchess - 13/11/08

Mark E. Smith is the last surviving punk of the old tradition, incredibly still touring and recording despite the death of his genre decades ago. But although popular music has evolved so dramatically since his heyday, Smith has changed not a jot, still defiantly ploughing a musical furrow of his very own.

Anyone remotely familiar with The Fall would have instantly recognised the band's repetitive, abrasive guitar noise long before Smith's inimitable drawl stumbled onto the stage. Having kept the crowd-of-a-certain-age waiting for over an hour, the frontman eventually emerged to rapturous applause, manifestly intoxicated. It is said that Sir Mick Jagger is the most piscine of rockstars, but even the Stones frontman has nothing on the sagging skin and gulping lips of Mark E. Smith.

Discord and simplicity are the group's hallmarks, and these were easily audible in abundance from the start. Scarcely playing anything more complex than punk beat one, drummer Keiron Melling only ever drove tempo change by making greater use of his cymbals, intensifying the engulfing, mesmeric sound. Creating this noise machine were funky enough bassist Dave Spurr, predictably though unfortunately restricted to endlessly reiterating two bar phrases, Smith's young wife Elena Poulou on a surprisingly guitar-sounding synth and Pete Greenway playing bog-standard rhythm guitar.

But as seemingly structureless as the constant flow of repetition was, the audience certainly knew exactly what was going on, singing along to Smith's utterly unintelligible lyrics with far greater vigour than their author appears ever to have had. Far removed from the rebellious energy of fellow punk icons The Clash and The Sex Pistols, The Fall have always defied through mutinous sarcasm rather than overt revolt. In this sense Smith is the very embodiment of punk, doing exactly as he wishes, rejecting and sneering at convention.

But with this insolence comes unprofessionalism. Visibly under the influence, Smith only actually "sang" for about half the gig, and much of that was with his back to the audience. The rest of his time was spent aimlessly shambling around, accidentally entangling microphone leads, or worse offstage entirely, leaving a notably unfazed band to fend for themselves for whole songs at a time.

When Smith passed drawling duties on to his wife for a while, perhaps because he could no longer hit the notes in his old age, but equally possibly out of sheer laziness, she imitated him admirably until he saw fit to return from the dressing room. Similarly during another stint of absence, a behoodied young Smith soundalike briefly emerged to cover for the frontman.

Fortunately, his fans were too loyal - or maybe simply too habituated to the inanity of the full Fall package - to be bothered by this abject disrespect. Smith's backing musicians however seemed decidedly annoyed rather than inspired by his presence, understandably so given his apparently random decisions to turn down guitar amps and play surreal, mistimed keyboard solos. If nothing else, that at least explains his notoriously extensive back-catalogue of collaborators.

Ultimately then, the gig was more interesting than entertaining: it's nice to know Smith is still there, keeping punk alive, just as long as he doesn't expect any cash donations to the cause.

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