The Fall will stand as long as Mark E Smith is able to, and probably even after that. Their power is undiminished, their paradox, as John Peel noted, of being always different, always the same, is as paradoxical as ever.
This compilation of live recently written material is badger’s-arse rough, the way Smith likes it, almost bootleg quality. The likes of Amorator and Jetplane sound like Charlie Feathers and Captain Beefheart having a fight in a broom cupboard yet always coming up musical roses. Smith’s songs, meanwhile, are barely decipherable yet unmistakable in their reproachful force, like a regular making scathing remarks about the normals from the saloon bar of a pub that refuses to be demolished to make way for the new world.
The current line-up is a cracking and quite stable one – The Fall, in the same old, and very different hands, remain freshly formidable./o:p
