So this is actually today's as far as I can tell, hope you've enjoyed today's mixed bag of entries, will be doing my utmost to keep up as I keep saying, but here we go with another one!
Song: Wolf Kidult Man
Album: Imperial Wax Solvent
Year: 2007
So this is a rough-as-hell bluesy number with some very cool vocals, cooly delivered I mean, its MES visiting film noir again, this is a great big dirty number and sounds as if it has been scraped along a concrete floor before being mastered.
The guitars buzz with that 'garage band' feel MES has been so keen to deliver for years, her sounding like they have been recorded in one, the earthed amps you can almost see, their grills shaking the cobwebs of long-dead spiders loose. This is The Fall getting mean and meaning it, the drums clatter and crash, the production on Mark's vocals seems to hiss and steam.
The lyrics here are part-mythological, concerning a werewolf I imagine, the sample at the start, a primeval howl, signals the dark nature of the song, but as usual, MES mixes in some current references, 'Where is your mum?' being a particularly funny example, taking out the serious side of an often po-faced legend (you know the type of thing, that Twilight nonsense being a good example).
Mark's love of The Twilight Zone (the only twilight show worth watching) rears its head again, as a recording of the episode Printers Devil appears at the end, again cementing the weird, sci-fi elements of the song. I love the fact he can slip in references like this now and again, something completely self-indulgent, but something we fans can sink our teeth into (no pun intended).
Think what I loved about this one, was that after a couple of to my mind very weak albums you had the excellent sinister Alton Towers you had this blast with the lines 'Reputation is gone, you're in the clear, boy'. A line that presumably refers to the werewolf no longer being recognised or remembered, but I like to think also refers to Smith's feeling a new-found freedom as a consequence of the burden of expectation having been reduced - which is when he always works best imo. (See The Unutterable, or Extricate).
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