Mark E. Smith & Ed Blaney-Westhill Community Centre, Brighton (14/02/09)

If you pegged this side-project as an inebriated and half-assed self-indulgence, your arrow could not have landed farther from the tree. While the studio recordings may display some of the aforementioned qualities, this intimate live document is nothing short of astonishing. Capturing Smith—for the first time in his career—in a relaxed acoustic setting before a handful of acolytes, he manages to steer the proceedings straight into a thicket of avant freak fringe weirdness, balancing some of his finest pure singing to date with toy keyboard and xylophone (!) overlays on the Blaney pieces that wholly recontextualize the material. Blaney’s old school melodicism is an ideal sauce for the main course of Smith’s absurdist utterances, and the pervasive d.i.y. ethos on display transforms “Real Good Time Together” into one of the few Velvets covers that avoids mimicking the sound but instead manages to net the esprit du corps of the original. But the real highlight here is “Mettle Claw,” as bleak and harrowing a view of contemporary English society as “New Puritan,” and every inch that songs equal. The recording on offer here is also a superb one. A soundboard of sorts from the Consortium, this is crisp, clear, with virtually zero audience noise.

Tracklisting:

01 The Train

02 Mettle Claw

03 When We Were Young

04 Real Good Time Together

05 No Retreat

06 Hustle (with MES singing lyrics to “Transfusion”)

07 Durasti

08 Luddite

09 Transfusion

10 My Ex-Classmate’s Kids