Credit: Found On Internet

Sometimes it’s hard to understand what the hell Mark E. Smith is singing: “Tay-yer fleesee jumperr, you won nee it aneemrrr”. The slurs of Salford’s stalwart pissed-up poet can sound like someone trying to communicate whilst in a deep sleep. But, like the fragmented messages of the unconscious, Smith’s worldview is bewilderingly rich and limitlessly entertaining, if you take the time to decipher it.

The Fall’s latest batch of songs that dominate tonight’s gig, taken from Fall Heads Roll (2005), is no exception. The repetitive grooves of Assume and Youwanna, which revert to The Fall pre-Brix Smith, liberated by the restrictive riff, match the obtuse frontman. Of course, he might just be pissed. But with the ability to make a crowd shout “Shipman” in unison, as the band beep and crunch into What about us (a song loosely based on an immigrant in “North Brittaahn” chastising a murderous, drug-dealing doctor for overlooking him – quite possibly) the likelihood of Smith’s lubrication is not a defining fact. Scratch the surface of his slurred exterior and there’s a mischievous bard still affective as ever in his odd moments of clarity, such as in his ode to the pub in Pacifying Joint (“I need a pacifying joint, where treaties are signed”) or the tale of claustrophobic city living in Blindness.

In reaction to the clear, transparent and instantly forgettable pop that Smith has pitted himself against for 28 years, with his trance-invoking repetition and hazy delivery, Smith’s band continues to antagonise the audience into participation. Instead of talking loud and saying nothing, Mark E. Smith manages to spit and slur and say just about everything.

Beren Neale