The Rise and Rise of The Fall...

I could quite comfortably sum up this particular gig in one word simple yet all encompassing word - mesmerising.
However, for the sake of those unfortunate enough to have missed Mark E. Smith and co’s display of assault-by-volume, I will further elaborate on the shape of the evening…
In this instance, the word mesmerising is intended to convey that aggressive and shambolic DIY style so prevalent in the punk and new-wave movement. Anarchic riffs clashed with slurring vocals, and unrelenting drum beats battled against disobedient reverb. In layman’s terms, the performance was a mess. But, as any punk rock aficionado will tell you, that is entirely the point.
If I had been presented with a sober and polite Mr. Smith, I would have been sorely disappointed. If the music of The Fall had suddenly taken on a crystal clear and over-produced sound, I would have turned on my heels and left. And so, as a direct result of this delightfully chaotic performance, I did not once catch myself thinking “They’ve lost it.” Not least as everything fell apart at the seams.
Since emerging from the backstreets of Greater Manchester in 1976, the band has experienced an almost bewildering number of line-up changes. However, The Palace performance cemented the notion that neither frontman Mark E. Smith nor the distinctive ‘Fall Sound’ have strayed too far from what was once championed by the unquestionable tastes of John Peel. The recent inclusion of Elena Poulou on keyboards (who is also married to frontman Mark, and is indeed not the first of his spouses to join the band) makes for some extremely hedonistic boy/girl vocals between husband and wife. Her deliberately aloof presence perfectly compliments the repetitive, abrasive style in which she plays - almost taunting the crowd with every aggressive jab of the keys, and every sarcastic roll of her eyes.
Presiding over these mocking electric notes were dark and brooding guitar riffs, punctuated with Kubrick-style abstractions. This willingness to experiment with creative distortion gives The Fall a somewhat psychedelic edge when compared to the typical punk rock outfit, and although this may be a paradox in itself it only serves to add continuity to an already paradoxical band. What indeed is a singer if he does not actually sing? The answer is Mark E. Smith.
Smith, who that evening appeared to be channelling the vocal style of Iggy Pop and the unsteady swagger of Shane McGowan after fifteen ebony Guinness’s, seemed to play the parts of both martyr and puppeteer in equal measures. Taking it upon himself to manipulate the volume of the guitars from deafeningly loud to eerily silent whenever he saw fit, Smith compensated for his lack of poise by commandeering the roles of his fellow bandmates. It would also seem that a wedding ring did not immune Elena from being ousted from her station, as Smith showed no hesitation in pushing her aside in order to pound on the keys himself.
Darting about the stage like a frenzied pinball, Mark single-handedly left the area in an avalanche of sound equipment, stepping carelessly in amongst the wreckage whilst delivering such sardonic lines as “I think it’s over now. I think it’s done.”
The work of The Fall, however, is certainly not ‘done’. For a band that have been leaving a wake of anarchy in their trails for over thirty years, Friday night’s performance certainly did not show any signs of a collective slowing down. As acerbic and raw as they were in the late 70’s, Mark E. Smith and company proved that they are as relevant now as they ever were, and with a current social and economic climate in Britain that mirrors their own heyday, perhaps even more so…

The Young Knives, And An Ever-So-Surprising Support Act…

What is it about the Principality that spawns such frankly odd bands? Adding to the eclectic list of Super Furry Animals and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Aberystwyth’s finest are more than deserving of a name check when considering the most fantastical of Welsh exports.
As they apologetically ambled on stage, lead singer Meilyr Jones appeared to make dressing down an art form. In fact, the first suggestions of retro were noticed upon the bands aesthetic style, and did indeed continue with the opening twang of guitar strings. However, Race Horses seem to possess a quality that many contemporary bands are missing - the ability to take hints from the past, whilst also maintaining a totally fresh and innovative sound. An astonishing hybrid of The La’s, Frank Zappa and The Sparks, Race Horses are able to lull you in with precious ohh and ahh harmonies, and then proceed to rip your face off with blistering and anthemic chords. A fortress of electric organs and impossibly antique synthesisers helped to further their antiquated sound by punctuating the set with Doors-style quivering keys.
After a ferociously energetic set (one song in particular, Scooter, mimicked the same sense of mayhem as the early Libertines sound), the audience were left in a whirl of ear-piercing feedback.
Although Race Horses may be one of the only hard-to-follow support bands currently on the scene, The Young Knives match was not quite met. Shuffling out in immaculately tailored suits and blasting the ever-recognisable bass intro to She’s Attracted To, it soon became clear that although the Knives have been absent from the live scene of late, they certainly haven’t forgotten how to please a crowd.
With more first album gold (including Loughborough Suicide, The Decision and the soaked in nostalgia Weekends And Bleak Days) came witty observations and self-directed insults. Pausing in-between songs to deliver hilarious reactions to friendly heckling (Audience Member: “Where have you been for the last year?!” House Of Lords: “Oh you know, just putting some shelves up”) it was obvious that the besuited three needed no time to readjust to live performance.
The set also provided an opportunity to showcase material from the much-anticipated third album, and luckily for us the Ashby de la Zouch natives have not ventured too far from the punchy, bass-driven style we have come to love. Rich in stinging chords and a conversational approach to vocal delivery, the newest offerings remain true to the traditional ’Knives style, whilst also displaying an obvious experimentation of tempo and harmonisation. More sensitive their new sound may be, but rest assured your hairstyle will not remain intact by the time the chorus comes around.
A more ideal finale could not have been conceived when the mighty Terra Firma saturated the atmosphere of the venue it all it’s stompy, chant-along glory. This icing on the cake (the cake being a comeback of gargantuan proportions) showed that when it comes to rattling the bones of everyone present whilst clad in Harris Tweed, The Young Knives have very much ‘still got it’. And in fact, despite a year-long absence from live performance, I don’t believe ‘it’ ever left them.

Claire Barrett: A Thoroughly Modern Antidote To Modern Art

It would appear that an artist's bedroom is much the same as an artist's mind - fascinatingly bizarre, yet almost impossible to analyse.
Somewhere in suburbia sits an awkwardly ageing bungalow, slightly unsure of itself as it displays the smatterings of personality its neighbouring structures are missing. A procession of tea lights and paper lanterns guides me down a dangerously dilapidated path, and leaves me standing at the front door of one of Britain’s most promising (and enigmatic) young artists.
Heavily peeling wallpaper, taxidermy butterflies, human skulls and unfeasibly abstract Polaroids pepper the room in which Claire Barrett lays her head and creates her self-proclaimed ‘apocalyptic artwork.’ The bedroom is not a million miles away from what I had envisioned (dark artwork and dead things are not exactly an unthinkable pairing), but the Wonder Cabinet-esqué room still manages to evoke the same feelings of discomfort as one would experience in an abandoned house. There is a sense of condemned vacancy, yet traces of personality still very much remain.
Barrett, a twenty-three-year-old contemporary artist from the South of England, sips blood-red Cabernet Sauvignon (which is slightly disconcerting when coupled with the omniscient stare of the eye-less skull), and talks softly but self-assuredly about her love affair with design. “I always loved drawing, and as a child I was very competitive about my art” she states with poise, as if there could be no possible alternative. “The first time I properly knew I wanted to make art was in Year Six in primary school. We had to draw something from our home, and I used to have this little cactus with googly eyes on it. It was on the first page of my sketchbook, and it was amazing. And that was it! I wanted to be an artist.”
Strange then, that the eventuality of Barrett’s artwork would jolt from jovial charactures of cacti, to impossibly dark renditions of an ink-based Armageddon. Although much of her work appears heavily abstract upon first inspection, Claire insists that her canvases denounce the effects of human influence on the natural landscape. In doing so, her art immediately stands alone from the subversive offerings of the brutally confrontational modern art movement.
“I don’t really think my work fits in at the moment, because it’s quite nostalgic in a way”, she informs, clearly relished by the prospect of her own uniqueness. “I’m dealing with traditional ideas of landscape, whereas I think more recent things tend to be quite ballsy and in your face…I like something a bit more subtle.”
The concept of Barrett’s work is indeed subtle. The final aesthetic of the art, however, delivers the same sinister and uncomfortable impact as a Freudian nightmare. Comprised mainly of black ink or graphite and almost overbearing in size, the pieces seem to engulf the viewer in the artist's message of ‘This Is What You’ve Done’, whilst maintaining enough visual grace to successfully avoid the garish presentation so prevalent in contemporary art.
This is clearly the result of Barrett’s disinterest in using shock as a device to make the audience take notice, an admirable quality in an age of menstrual blood enthusiasts like Tracy Emin, and formaldehyde aficionados such as Damien Hurst. Adamant that her main source of inspiration is derived from the landscape itself, Barrett is able to create fiercely individual work whilst conveying an almost classical appreciation for beauty and competence.
Secondary to her ecological muse comes the inspiration taken from other established artists, all of which make perfect sense when considering the evolution of her own particular style and approach. When asked which artists have impacted the outcome of her own work, Barrett immediately replies, “Hundreds.” When pressed to whittle this expansive answer down to two or three individuals, she effortlessly delivers the names Mark Rothko, Richard Serra and Rachel Whiteread, with the kind of rehearsed quality one only achieves after years of admiration.
Despite Claire’s cultivation of a perfectly unique style, she battles internally with the notion of borrowing too many points of inspiration from her beloved peers. I ask if the work of the afore-mentioned artists is in any extent reflected in her own creations, to which she sombrely replies, “Almost a little bit too much sometimes. I have to keep check on it.”
Perhaps my untrained eye is ill-equipped to pass such judgement, but I personally feel that there is little aesthetic likeness between the sculptural and sparse work of Rothko, Serra and Whiteread, and Barrett’s darkly passionate portrayals of an abstract Judgement Day. Although there may exist obvious conceptual parallels between the work Barrett produces, and the work she admires (all make attempts to change the way in which we think about the space around us), her innovative style should instil a sense of unbreakable self-belief, rather than provoking any questioning of originality.
Barrett also cites architecture as a significant point of inspiration, and somewhat unsurprisingly she champions the designers who work with a clear sense of ecological awareness. “I’m really into modernist architecture”, she tells me, with a contemplative gaze. “Really blocky, striking stuff like Frank Lloyd Wright, who tried to make buildings that worked in harmony with the landscape.”
Although Claire is quick to allude to the artistic movements she so admires, I am interested to learn if she harbours any distain for certain stylistic approaches.
With an obvious disinterest for confrontational artwork, I wonder if, in the opinion of this still-emerging artist, there are any individuals who do not deserve the acclaim they have achieved? “Well there’s not really a particular artist that I don’t like”, she hesitantly informs, with the kind of sensitive reserve most commonly found in individuals who have not yet been hardened by the industry. “If I find a movement that I really don’t like, it is because I don’t understand it. Most of the movements that I now completely adore, I used to hate. Before I started University I hated landscape, and I hated minimalism because I thought it was completely pointless. But now I work in landscape and I did my dissertation on minimalism, so it’s completely backwards.”
As someone who has witnessed the failings of art school education on a first-hand basis, I am immediately pricked by the word ‘University’, and feel compelled to question my subject about her own experience. Barrett however, who studied Fine Art at Farnham’s University for the Creative Arts and graduated in 2009 with a thoroughly respectable 2:1, seems positively perplexed when I tell her of my own dissatisfaction for British art institutions. “I had a great time at University” she informs, somewhat mystified. An expression which almost suggests mistrust spreads across her face as she contemplates the possibility of not enjoying the study of art. “I think as long as you go out there and demand the attention of the tutors and show them that you’re focused and willing to plough on through, then they will give you all of the attention that you need.”
I wasn’t entirely convinced, but I suppose this clash of opinions only serves to emphasise Barrett’s magnified appreciation for her craft in comparison with my own. As I cast my glance around her bedroom for a second time, my eye slowing over the piles of canvases, stacks of sketchbooks and reams of ink-blackened paper, I realise that Barrett possesses a trait that I am missing - the ability to fully immerse herself in art.
The presence of such items displays the ongoing manner in which Barrett coexists with her work, on both a literal and metaphorical level. A cliché it may be, but to be present in this artists personal space and to witness the close proximity in which she lives amongst her materials is to realise that this individual truly is at one with her work.
But how, I wonder, are such large-scale pieces created in this inspirational yet highly restricted space? “Most of the work I was making at University was created in a drawing studio, which was just enormous. It was the size of three houses, I had the whole space to myself and I could spread out”, she reminisces. As her eyes trail across her now confined-in-comparison bedroom, I notice a pining expression cast itself across her pale face, not entirely dissimilar to that of a caged animal looking out at the free world.
An interesting spectacle to observe she may be, but deep down I know it is wrong to keep such an obvious free spirit under the confines of four suffocating walls.
Whilst I am occupied with this thought, Barrett extends her reach to a bedside table and offers me a pocket-sized sketchbook to study. The book contains her most recent compositions, and before I even begin to flick through the pallid pages I am struck by the impossibly small dimensions of the book in comparison to vast canvases she is now synonymous with.
Surely a character with such hunger for literal freedom cannot be confined to A5?
“Because I’m now restricted to this tiny room, my work has got so much smaller. It’s all too confined. And I haven’t been making as much.” The sense of regret and disappointment seems to seep from every pore as she divulges this information to me. I really do feel as though I am in the company of a bird who’s wings have been clipped - and just as a bird needs freedom to project beautiful song, Claire Barrett needs freedom to create beautiful and true to self art.
Thumbing carefully through the pages of this newly cultivated sketchbook, I am presented with the repetition of collaged postcards - all of which seem to depict some form of sprawling landscape. Baron desserts have been pasted onto virtuous mountains, and cascading waterfalls have been paired with mighty forests. I suddenly feel as though the book I am holding is not so much a place for artistic musings, but a definite and insatiable cry for help.
Momentarily avoiding my carefully planned notes and acting on instinct alone, I ask Claire where she would like to be. Do these scenes of infinity hint towards a specific location, or are they simply evocative of ‘anywhere but here’?
“I would really like to go and make work in America. Just make work as I walk around. That’s something I’d really like to do.”
I should have known that a country in which England can fit itself nearly forty times would be the ideal location for a wandering soul. Interrupting my thought with a now animated tone and brightened eyes, Barrett escapes off into an obviously lucid daydream. “Half of the landscapes I am obsessed with are there. The vast deserts, the mountains…just the vastness of the place. You can walk from one side to the other and see so many different things on the way. Whereas England…Well, its all very English.”
Totally immersed in thought, I believe her to have forgotten my presence. But rather than feeling insulted and ignored in favour of wistful thinking, I am as content in my psyche as she. For Barrett to achieve some form of solace from the confines of suburbia - even if it is only in her mind - is a feat tinged with great joy, and wrenching sorrow. I am pleased to witness her mood lift at the prospect of never-ending space, but I dread the moment in which her mind snaps back to reality, and cruelly snatches her away from her sprawling oasis.

From The Jam: A Smash Of Glass And The Rumble Of Boots...

The 30th of April 2010 marked a monumental and much awaited change for the face of live music in Hampshire. At precisely 7.30pm on a balmy Friday evening, The Palace opened its doors for the first time to a diverse and animated crowd of revellers - many of whom were veteran Jam fans and attended specifically to witness the powerhouse-of-bass that is Bruce Foxton. Other individuals however, were simply in pursuit of a fulfilling live music experience, and somewhere unique in which to enjoy it.
Neither parties were disappointed upon entering the newly remodelled Palace. Exclamations of excitement and a chorus of Oh My God's could not be masked as the crowd slowly filtered in to the main stage area, almost needing a moment of stillness to adjust to the palatial sight that greeted them. With a design lay-out to rival the likes of Hammersmith Apoll and a sound system to rival a wall of Marshall amps cranked up to eleven, The Palace has on first impressions alone anointed itself as the location for live music in the local vicinity, and beyond.
The tone of the evening was effortlessly set with the jaunty acoustics of Kim Slade, who’s tales of dejected youth provoked a striking sense of familiarity in almost everyone present. Taking to the velvet-draped stage with only a guitar and a distinctive voice, Slade immersed the audience in skippy upbeat chords whilst regaling in the mundane experience of growing up a British kid. At times tinged with hints of Oasis, at others with an obvious influence of Ska, Slade’s melodic offerings were akin to hitchhiking across the most influential genres in music, all within the space of a twenty minute set. One particular highlight of the performance was the deliciously naughty track Cartwheels, which provoked a rhythmic flurry of stomping and clapping as Slade delivered such lyrical sentiments as “At the end of her bed was where I took off her little red dress”.
With the stage now suitably christened for the presence of an epic Mod revival, Bruce Foxton, Rick Buckler and Russell Hastings stepped out in perfectly polished Creepers to an overwhelming offering of ovation. Any concerns regarding the absence of Paul Weller were quickly diminished as the first blistering chords of Down In The Tube Station At Midnight rang out over The Palace, swiftly followed by Hastings’ pitch-perfect (and delightfully acerbic) vocal display. It was almost as if each line was being uttered by Weller himself, and the delight of the crowd manifested itself as unbridled, pogo-ing mania.
The wrenchingly nostalgic Jam anthems kept on coming - each one performed with more energy and passion than the last. In The City, Start! and a particularly beautiful rendition of That’s Entertainment were dispensed with total disregard of age, especially in the case of Foxton who leapt across the stage with such height that his eighteen year old self would probably have turned green with envy. A version of The Eton Rifles (ironically dedicated to David Cameron) was played with such enthusiasm that the bass could be felt reverberating around the centre of the chest, altering the rhythm of the heart beat through sheer volume and velocity.
The audience were indulged further still when the performance was concluded with a favourites-laden encore, including Beat Surrender and A Town Called Malice. As the infamous target logo presided over the stage, not a single soul in the venue remained still: a true testament to the impeccable musicianship and raucous energy produced by From The Jam that evening.
Now that’s entertainment.