Scenes come and go. Fashions and fads fly by in the post-everything breeze. Holes in the ground open up, and are filled by Landfill Indie. Empires rise and fall. Camden remains a ropey old place, on a chilly weekday evening, 7.30pm. I wait at the World's End for Mark, as pale characters and hurried youngsters drift and rush at the junction of Camden High Road and Parkway. There are plenty of people about, but nobody really wants to be here. There's an echo of an echo.
So when better to be seeing the Fall?
The support act at the cavernous (though eye-poppingly full) Koko is the band that MES harvested the 2nd- or 3rd line-up ago of the Fall from. Darker My Love. Yes, it's a shocking name, and their charisma-free Doors & Byrds lite is teeth-gnashingly uninspired. Going through the (bowel) motions. The sort of group that tribute bands think is pinching their audience.
I don't think that I've seen anyone in the Fall look more worried than the new guitarist did. Even in the days of Steve Hanley (who looked almost permanently on edge; the first time I ever saw The Fall, with Vanessa back in '92 at the Brixton Academy, I couldn't even begin to understand how performing with this creature could be so anxiogenic) there wasn't a brow so figuratively furrowed as this one.
Smith is back on form. We know this, because he is now noticing enough to want to faff about with the controls on the amplifiers. We also know this because he tolerated his partner, um, guiding him away from her keyboard with a gentle hand, without so much as a scowl. We also know this because a lean and muscular and very well-organised Fall punched through the (almost entirely new) material for an hour and more with little ceremony and just a hint of gruff, gritted-jaw panache; Smith was with them every step of the way.
"Unseen Facts" indeed.
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