10 songs about creeps and saints
In honor of Halloween and All Saints Day, I’d like to share some of the songs that have been hair-raising and end with some beauties that mention saints (and sometimes mention both).
Lisa Germano – …A Psychopath
You are about to meet Karen. Within this song is her 911 message of a man breaking into her house and Karen out of breath from screaming “Why are you here?” — it’s not clear to me if the call is real but I’d put money on it. The song is terrifying in its realness, horrifying in its sadness.
Alongside the recording is the paradox that is Germano’s sweet vocals. She sings “A baseball bat / beside my bed” and “A psychopath, a psychopath, he says he loves me / And I’m alone, and I am cold and paralyzed.”
Geek the Girl is one of Germano’s best albums and this song is possibly the most intense piece of popcraft put to tape. The intersection between her dulcet frankness and the message she conveys do not cross each other out but resonate like a bow to string.
Barry Adamson – It’s Business as Usual
More eerieness via the phone, Adamson features three voicemails over hairlifting percussion, anxiety fueled moments with synths and other deep-bass sound effects. Find the song in the original wonderfully-named Oedipus Schmoedipus — not the watered down The Beach version.
First message has a female who asks “Mr. Adamson, Barry” to come home to her and the baby and she sees him at the park but “You walked right fucking past me / What the hell is going on with you? / I know you love us, we love you.”
Second message, a man: “I saw you with her.” He continues that he “Keeps good track of my woman / I saw you walking the way you do / Strut your stuff / My woman / My baby.”
This song is the ghost groom to Lisa Germano’s “…A Psychopath”
Biegg Cittie Arkestraugh – Karawane
Spooky and simple, alternatively-named Big City Orchestra has multiple speakers say, repeat, scream, sing in unison the title of Dadaist Hugo Ball’s poem over feedback and induce gooseflesh until the the full poem is finally spoken and devolves into grunts and squeals.
This rarity may be hard to find, it was on the Isomorphic compilation The Arbitrary Nature of Meaning.
Kate Bush – Waking the Witch
Bush can assemble eerie songs full of voices, sonic manipulation and her brand of rococo. “Waking the Witch” appears on Hounds of Love and is as childlike as the movie The Exorcist.
It begins with a zoetrope of voices that beg a child listener to “Wake Up / Wake up child and pay attention.” The voice yell at once, all vying for attention — some caring and innocent, others in dark grumbles and in electronically syncopated appeals.
Sauce it up with a little Latin “spiritu sanctus in nomine” and Bush’s vocals moaning over hellicopters that flew in from Pink Floyd The Wall and you have a the audio version of a haunted house.
There are some amusing videos on YouTube but I’ve chosen the simplest:
Esben & The Witch – Marching Song
Enter the witch: I stumbled across this band via a Matador tweet. I clicked over to Esben & The Witch’s site, watched the video (below) and bought the 12”. “Marching Song” has a that new-Goth haze / chillwave girly sound like Warpaint, Zola Jesus, and Pocahaunted.
What gives E&TW extra oomph is a throwback nod to the classic Bauhaus high-pitched whine and reverb of a guitar-line a la “In the Flat Field” which cuts through all the noise. Rachel Davies‘s voice is both icy and ethereal, strong and soft. It echoes across the bog of the song with backing howls that dervish behind her own.
The video of the band members getting increasingly distressed and bruised and bloody is a makeup artist’s orgasm and adds that frightening element.
His Name Is Alive – St. Michael
Flip to Side B: Warren Defever‘s tribute to Michael Jackson (“Michael you’re an angel”) with breath-holding Andy FM vocals. The song is sparse and drawn with the familiar HNIA template that holds up The Eclipse as a great and probably underrated release.
“Sitting on the edge of your bed / Only a few minutes left / I see your wings, I hear them singing / I can’t get enough, I need them for sleeping” is about as truthful and exasperating as lyrics on Jackson’s death can get. You cannot doubt Defever’s sincerity when he counter-balances with the chorus “Hold Your Fire.”
Official video has drool-worthy DIY Jackson album covers:
Sufjan Stevens – Sleeping Bear, Sault Saint Marie
The banjo ecstasy of a song from the states album Michigan is fuzzy with that autumnal feel. This song has more to do with the town across the St. Mary’s river than any saint it was named after. The nighttime crickets the creak at the end of the song give the sense that the days are getting shorter and that is relevant enough.
Brian Eno – St. Elmo’s Fire
On Eno’s groundbreaking Another Green World, he evokes images of walking “In the blue August moon / In the cool August moon” until “we saw St. Elmo’s Fire / Splitting ions in the ether”
The song makes you want to hike and make camp against the cold British countryside, something like abufstar is thinking of:
{{{SUNSET}}} – Zombies
You cannot do halloween without getting a little twee.
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Optimist vs. The Silent Alarm (When the Saints Go Marching In)
In honor of St. Owen Ashworth and the death of CFTPA please enjoy an ironic bit from his last album.
Nostalgic video from mehrlicht :
