The Victoria, once a vital community taproom, has recently been morbidly transmogrified into the kind of greige hive of irrelevance of which latter-day London now reeks; a hallmark of harrowing gentrification that nobody much seems to want nor, for that matter, need. ‘A working people’s pub and club’ ’tis no more therefore, although with that said, you’d be hard pushed to happen upon such a thing in Dalston these days; additionally, London’s been doing away with alright venues for decades already, so it’s seemingly, eminently safe to assume all locals’ locales akin to the ‘working people’s’ watering hole that once was The Victoria are certain to go the way of Alexandrina sooner, rather than later; presuming they’ve not already done so, that is…

Nevertheless, the austere severity of Fear of Men’s quintessentially British (and thereby brusque, but defiant) ditties seems perfectly suited to the irrefutable deterioration of this savagely ravaged onetime bastion of reasonably priced east London boozers: recent single Island – from a forthcoming sophomore full-length, Fall Forever – bridges the gap between the saccharinity of their cultured début, Loom, and the trials, tribulations and latent turmoil that has consumed the country since. And, just as it was in These New Puritans’ superb Hidden in 2010, Jessica Weiss & Co. have condensed down an atmosphere of fear into a work that, on tonight’s evidence, is to be as decisive as it is divisive.

As per These New Puritans’ masterpiece, there are instances that, although gloriously uncompromising, flirt with the unapologetically inaccessible; sounds of scrapes akin to a Grim Reaper rattling its scythe up and down the impenetrable bars of some nirvanic realm, and so on. Forbidding, unremitting gloom thus sinistrously threatens to overwhelm the show, with singles lifted from Loom scarcely enough to lighten the monochromic tones and claustrophobic, attritional timbres.

Thus although a recent stint touring America has visibly bettered Weiss’ incontrovertibly bewitching stagecraft – whether reaching out for a hand that, naturally, never greets hers, or lurching forwards with poise and purpose likewise, this development is very evident – if she appears considerably more comfortable onstage, then her better known (and, for that matter, loved) numbers do not. More vocally accomplished she may be, but the likes of Luna sound wan and washed-out; lacking a passion that has been displaced and deployed elsewhere. The enduring Green Sea, similarly, sounds drowned out by the sheer heft and cyclonic heave of those Fall Forever songs which surround it.

Descent and Seer, forever radiant with their jingling chords and jangly choruses, of course endear, although they lack the cut and thrust otherwise injected into proceedings by Daniel Falvey’s curt, clipped guitars and Michael Miles’ ruthless, militaristic cymbals and snares. As such, it’s Waterfall above all – an instant classic, due undiluted approbation, that has dated enviably well – which fits in best with a newfound direction to have taken the woebegone Brightonians considerably deeper into pits of proverbial despair. But, just as Richey Edwards and Nicky Wire once wondered where to go from there, Fear of Men now need to better adjust the contrasting blacks, whites and in-betweens of their back catalogue in order to successfully calibrate past and present, and to ensure their future is brighter than that of their native Britain…