"But there was nothing about the little, low-rambling, more or less identical homes of Northumberland Estates to interest or to haunt, no chance of loot that would be any more than the ordinary, waking-world kind the cops hauled you in for taking; no small immunities, no possibilities for hidden life or otherworldly presence; no trees, secret routes, shortcuts, culverts, thickets that could be made hollow in the middle – everything in the place was right out in the open, everything could be seen at a glance; and behind it, under it, around the corners of its houses and down the safe, gentle curves of its streets, you came back, you kept coming back, to nothing; nothing but the cheerless earth."
Thomas Pynchon, "The Secret Integration"
This is Ian Mathers' Tumblr. I live in Canada. I've written about music and other things for Stylus, PopMatters, Resident Advisor, the Village Voice, and a few other places. Hi.
imathers@gmail.com
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
A while back, I was trading mixes with my friends Jess and Rebecca, and one of the themes we picked was “bodies.” Because Clinic’s “Distortions” is one of my all-time favourite songs and because body issues aren’t unknown to me, I decided to make the mix a little disturbing, in various ways. Another friend recently asked me to upload it again, so I figured I’d put it on Tumblr as well. As always, if you like a song you should go support the band, if you’re in a band and hideously offended you should let me know and I’ll take it down. I think this is one of the more effective mixes I’ve ever made; certainly I heard back that it was impressive but maybe a bit hard to take. Here’s the tracklisting, the (fairly extensive) liner notes I made for it are beneath the cut.
- Clinic - Porno (3:52)
- Frightened Rabbit - The Modern Leper (3:51)
- Florence + The Machine - Drumming Song (3:44)
- Future of the Left - Chin Music (1:56)
- The Smiths - Still Ill (3:32)
- Radiohead - Gagging Order (3:35)
- Hefner - Tactile (4:28)
- Tindersticks - Sweet Release (8:56)
- Smog - Dirty Pants (4:32)
- Broadcast - Corporeal (3:55)
- Manic Street Preachers - Removables (3:31)
- Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Me and Mia (3:31)
- Scott Walker - Jesse (6:28)
- Xiu Xiu - Suha (4:50)
- The Mountain Goats - In Corolla (3:48)
- Clinic - Distortions (4:02)
Total: 68:25
So, for this mix I think I went to kind of a weird place. Because if you say ‘bodies’ to me in the context of music I immediately think of “Distortions,” one of my favourite songs ever ever ever, and that is not a song about having a normal/healthy/happy relationship with your body.
I mean, if you think about it, most of us have a very easy, uncomplicated time with our bodies and corporeality in general. I know it’s not until I get sick or injured that I’m forced to stop and think about this mass of meat and blood and bone that is me. Ever pulled a muscle in your arm? When you can’t reach above the level of your eyeline, it throws into sharp relief just how often you do that without thinking about it. And I really like songs and things in general that talk about the kind of body issues that extend past “oh, my ass looks fat in these jeans” and into some seriously dark stuff, all the way into nausea and horror (Damien Hirst: “I remember once getting really terrified that I could only see out of my eyes. Two little fucking holes. I got really terrified by it.”). Not that this mix is wall-to-wall unpleasantness, but it did wind up a little more… visceral than I’d expected it to. What we have here, then, is a collection of songs about or by or from the perspective of people who don’t like their own bodies, or don’t understand them, or are betrayed by them, or who feel trapped by them. Or in a couple cases, people who are possibly about to do something awful to other bodies instead.
The title comes from a Longpigs song (and try looking up “long pig” in the wikipedia cannibalism article sometime), and the art is a real photo of the guy who wrote #11. More on that when we get there.
Clinic - Porno
So sometimes I do this thing where I decide that a mix should start and end with the same band. And “Distortions” was never not going to be the final track here, but when I stumbled onto “Porno” again I started thinking it needed to be here too. Maybe it’s a not a good place to start, being one of songs here that’s more abstractly related to the theme, but I think Ade Blackburn’s downright disturbing moaning at the beginning and the overall feel of the song warrants it. “Porno” is a song about being bored and restless, about having urges you don’t want to have to satisfy, about feeling foreign in your own skin.
Frightened Rabbit - The Modern Leper
He says that you must be a masochist to love him, but he sounds pretty masochistic himself: Who else sings a song to the one they love that’s entirely about what a pathetic cripple they are, that describes any amount of reconciliation as “you are back for even more of exactly the same”? Body parts keep dropping off throughout the song; he’s so disgusted with himself he can’t even imagine being a whole person.
Florence + The Machine - Drumming Song
Once again Jess and I pick the same band… if you’re down at all with contrasting the intellectual and instinctive parts of the human existence, well, “Drumming Song” is about the sneaking suspicion that we don’t control the latter. Like the last track it’s technically a love song but one filled with foreboding; Florence sounds more horrified by her lack of volition concerning her attraction than anything else. There’s plenty of lust here, sure, but when she sings that it’s “hotter than hell” I get a distinct whiff of brimstone too.
Future of the Left - Chin Music
“I know it only happened ‘cos I couldn’t stop drinking/it only happened ‘cos I couldn’t drink more.” Something the Brits seem to get that we don’t, for better or worse (I’m going to say worse) is the terrible joy inherent in deranging oneself with alcohol and beating the living bejeezus out of someone who may or may not ‘deserve’ it. I hasten to add that Andy Falkous seems like the opposite of this kind of idiot and the rest of the album is both scabrous and very funny. But the guy in this song, I wouldn’t want to run into him in an alley.
The Smiths - Still Ill
Only Morrissey, that self-reflexive arch-abstractor, could put this kind of fey spin on the exact same thing Florence is wrestling with. Is being ill being in love? Being alive? A dandy of the highest order, you suspect Moz would be happiest if everything was still and perfectly composed and beautiful forever - but those damned hormones, that damn flesh, keeps getting in the way. You know he loves it.
Radiohead - Gagging Order
I was going to go with “How to Disappear Completely” but Jess pointed out that it’s a lot less likely that people (her) had heard this b-side instead, and that people (her) might really want to hear it. It’s an acoustic song. It’s kind of the opposite of “True Love Waits.” He’s not here anymore, it’s “just a body.” The petulance, I think, works.
Hefner - Tactile
A bit of a call back to the opening track (“I think I’m watching too much porn on TV… I’m not lonely, I’m just bored”), “Tactile” is sung from the perspective of a man totally wrung out, one that doesn’t even seem to feel real desire anymore but he’s still going through the motions. And for what? Adultery? Sad smiles in the dirty magazines? To be held? Following on from “Gagging Order,” this is the body as empty room, with the soul a tenant that can neither be bothered to leave nor to do anything with the place.
Tindersticks - Sweet Release
On “City Sickness” from their debut album, Stuart Staples sang “I have these hands, beating with love for you/and you’re not here to touch” and years later we get the inverse: “Sweet Release” is a lush, soulful, sweeping track about the insufficiency of masturbation.
Smog - Dirty Pants
From the lived-in details of the portrait in the first verse, there’s already something earthy and menacing about this song, which admittedly is kind of what Bill Callahan does (as I told Jess, my favourite lines from this album might be “I feel the night sky is a jewelry store window/and my mind is half a brick”). It builds to a quietly horrifying conclusion; the narrator of “Dirty Pants” might feel perfectly comfortable with his body, but the ‘you’ he’s singing to probably wishes that wasn’t the case.
Broadcast - Corporeal
This is probably the kind of sentiment the guy from “Dirty Pants” wishes he could hear from you. In isolation it’s probably more sardonic than chilling, but as long as Trish Keenan keeps nearly all emotion from her voice “Corporeal” remains a beautifully blank slate, fitting for a song about wanting to be just anatomy and nothing more.
Manic Street Preachers - Removables
Gather round kids, it’s a history lesson (apologies if this is a repeat for anyone)! The Manic Street Preachers were an outsized, ambitious Welsh rock band that talked an awfully good game and then put out a debut double album that sounded like a mix between the Clash and Guns and Roses. Then they put out a goth second album. Then, and this is where I start getting interested, they put out something called The Holy Bible. Richey Edwards had always been part of the band, but he didn’t sing or play anything (short of miming rhythm guitar live). He wrote lyrics, he made art, he set the tone. He also cut and starved himself; the art for the mix is cropped from a famous photograph of Richey after a journalist argued with him about his band’s authenticity. Richey went away and carved “4 REAL” into his arm.
The Holy Bible might be the most purely disturb(ed/ing) record I own. The music isn’t all that unconventional (actually, hearing Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield cramming the cramped, profane lyrics of something like “Yes” into a broadly anthemic rock framework is kind of amazing), but this is an album where the most positive song is called “Die in the Summertime.” That song is about wishing you had been killed back when you were young enough that the world still seemed good. I was originally inclined to put Richey’s “4st 7lb” (the minimum weight the average adult female can still survive at) on here, but I had a failure of nerve; it’s appropriate but I listen to these things multiple times before sending them out and I just couldn’t face it.
So anyway, when the band were thinking about a follow up to The Holy Bible, Richey vanished. His car was found close to a bridge famous for its suicides. He’s never been heard from again, not even a body; they finally declared him presumed dead in 2008. The other three made an album called Everything Must Go that is honestly right up there with Live Through This in the catharsis stakes, and they used a few of Richey’s lyrics. This is one of them. It’s one of his cheerier efforts, as the between-verse bit that goes “killed god blood soiled unclean again” indicates. And yet… Bradfield sings the chorus as if it’s about hope, as if the flipside of the suicidal/self-harming impulse embodied in “all removables, all transitory” is that this, too, will pass.
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Me and Mia
Ted Leo seems like an standup guy. So what the holy hell is he doing writing a song that veers uncomfortably close to being pro-anorexia (yes, “Ana” and “Mia” are not girls)? I get that he’s probably just inhabiting a character, but giving a lyric that’s about how starving yourself is somehow noble such an anthemic chorus makes me very, very uneasy. It is, however, an excellent song to exercise to.
Scott Walker - Jesse
Elvis Aaron Presley had a twin brother, did you know that? Jesse Garon Presley. Died in the womb. Elvis always felt guilty about this and would often talk to Jesse. I am not making this up. Scott Walker, who sounds a bit like Bowie doing Phantom of the Opera at points (but was making music before Bowie and Bowie happily admits to being a fan and emulating him), makes really creepy music. This time he’s singing it to/from the perspective of Elvis’ stillborn twin. It’s also kind of about 9/11. The ending is one of the most purely desolate things I’ve ever heard. I don’t know if I can articulate why this fits other than the above, but I hope I don’t have to.
Xiu Xiu - Suha
Continuing our good-timey hit parade, “Suha” is possibly about forced prostitution of some kind. Note that “please let me escape” and “I’m going to hang myself” are roughly equivalent in the chorus. Note also that this is one of Jamie Stewart’s more feel good and melodious songs.
The Mountain Goats - In Corolla
The genius of John Darnielle is that this song is either about a man so alienated from God and man and life that he literally turns into a monster, sloughs off his old skin and sinks into the sea, or it’s about the same man drowning himself. Or is there a difference?
Clinic - Distortions
I can’t even say anything about this song. I will say I think it’s kind of despairing but not ultimately negative or without hope. I don’t know, go find the abstract, strangely moving video on YouTube or something.
