Throbbing Gristle, Trump, and The Modern Trickster | SOTW 11/15/2024
Well, the holidays are coming up, so I hope you set aside a weekend to read this whole post. It won’t take any less time to read.
STAMPEDE OF THE OHMU | Joe Hisaishi Four posts after my accidental Songs of the Week hiatus, we are still working through songs I’ve had slated to review since June—so long that I think I already got out all of my thoughts on Joe Hisaishi’s score in what audiences are calling my dissertation-length Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind review back in September. Sure, I’ll take any excuse to talk Nausicaä ad nauseam, especially since this bizarre leitmotif from its soundtrack has somehow risen to my most-played song of 2024, but I’d hate to be redundant—you know, any more than usual. For those who haven’t seen Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, there will be no spoilers ahead beyond the vague premise of the movie, but I’m begging you—if you’re a fan of animation, creature design, or anything about the goofy fantasy stories of a bygone age, skip this review and go in blind. Nausicaä will not disappoint. Unless you’re a stickler for good dialogue.
Anyone that’s witnessed Nausicaä in all its sincere, cheeseball glory knows that every facet of this film swings for the fences despite its budgetary and technological constraints, and the soundtrack is no exception. At his side from the very start, director Hayao Miyazaki’s loyal composer Joe Hisaishi has since defined Studio Ghibli’s sound through serene piano, majestic strings, and an innate understanding of childhood’s magical mysteries—all well and good, but have you ever heard him shred on an electric guitar? That’s right, for as iconic as the contemplative, whimsical soundtracks for Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, or Howl’s Moving Castle might be, Hisaishi wasn’t always some boring-ass classicist—this dude used to be like “throw a sitar in with that synth, and make it double speed.” In all seriousness, I love Hisaishi’s later, tender work, but this contrast made my first listen to Nausicaä’s bold soundtrack like a splash of ice water in the face. Already stunned to start what I thought was a kid’s movie in the midst of a post-apocalyptic hellscape of tentacled horrors, hearing Hisaishi’s deeply-eighties synth glitters already had me perplexed and excited, but it was “Stampede of the Ohmu” that really sold what a good time was in store. While I can’t put you in my shoes watching Nausicaä’s anniversary return to theaters, I can offer this french-dubbed bootleg version of this scene recorded on a phone while playing on a TV:
So, I’m sure you can imagine that that rules regardless of language, right? Though we talked about the Ohmu chase itself in my full Nausicaä review, let’s focus in on the backing music. If you listen to the track itself on streaming, it’s a strange amalgamation of what you hear in the above clip bookended by two, totally separate leitmotifs that occur within the same ten minutes or so of the movie. It’s an odd artifact of pre-streaming score organization that I can’t explain, but which exists even for movies like The Empire Strikes Back—short musical interludes are lumped in with longer, more prominent pieces, often without regard for order of appearance. If Nausicaä’s score was organized like, say, that of Into the Spiderverse, “Stampede of the Ohmu” would be three, separate, forty-second tracks—not everyone’s cup of tea, but certainly easier when it comes to specifying which fragment of music is being referred to. Digression aside, the specific part of “Stampede of the Ohmu” I found to be rad as fuck is from 0:32 to 1:43 on the score—the galloping chase music that blasts out from a standstill as Nausicaä swoops in to save Lord Yupa from the raging insect. Like much of Nausicaä’s score, Hisaishi’s instrumentation is goofy and incongruous—the climbing piano chords here, for example, sound so strange harmonized with sparkling synth, all while the guitar babbles incessantly on as if it doesn’t hear the rest of the band. It’s truly a feat of wizardry than any of this works, let alone works as well as it does—I may be wrong, but I’ve always interpreted the guitar’s bugling riffs as the sounds emanating from the massive Ohmu itself, and boy, how wild would that be?
This kind of childlike, adventurous maximalism with the emergence of synthesizer technology is a resounding index for lower-budget scores that shoot for a futuristic glisten in the mid-eighties, and by god, do I love it. While there’s no denying the campiness of all these dinky noises, as with the rest of Nausicaä’s dated aspects, it’s the passionate human hands behind them that really gives this style its charm—though the imagination that drives it goes far beyond human limitations, these musicians ran right up to the line attempting to capture something otherworldly, and I, for one, feel their excitement. I may also have a certain nostalgia for this style of composition because it persisted in nature documentaries long after it’d fallen out of fashion in film. David Attenborough’s amazing The Living Planet, for example—released around the same time—has such a silly soundtrack that still somehow captures nature’s strangeness, and I have a feeling it influenced documentary composers for years to come. We already compared Nausicaä’s many similarities with another favorite cheesy documentary of mine—The Future is Wild—but the resemblance, down to its equally goofy music, is all there. Once again, I’ll say “Stampede of the Ohmu’s” exciting middle section could easily overlay the Carakiller chase in TFIW episode 4, “Prairies of the Amazonia,” and no one would bat an eye (from here to 7:12, but I won’t complain if you watch the whole episode). In a time when most scores have shifted from emphasis on melody to emphasis on atmosphere (which, to be fair, has plenty of its own merits), I wish more composers would unashamedly return to this goofy, incongruous bravery—I may not enjoy a lot of his scores as much as most, but to his credit, Ludwig Göransson has absolutely carried this torch into the modern age with his eclectic Black Panther and The Mandalorian scores. Someday, bizarre soundtracks will return in a field of golden light…
Unfortunately, the sparseness of 80s-2010s documentary series scores available on streaming means that pairings won’t really come from this genre today. However, as a weird quirk of “Stampede of the Ohmu” being a chimera of three unrelated motifs, the track itself pairs well with a surprising diversity of songs. XTC’s “Happy Family” segues excellently into the sparkling synths that begin “Stampede of the Ohmu,” as does Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please,” if you aren’t tired enough of it already. From the same era but far more cleanly executed, Arcadia’s incredible, angsty, and successfully eighties “Election Day” also makes for a nice continuation in terms of vibes, even if the melodies aren’t exactly the same.
Pairs Well With: “Happy Family” (XTC), “Please Please Please” (Sabrina Carpenter), “Election Day” (Arcadia)
RAY OF LIGHT | Madonna So, I know I’ve talked a lot about how my Dad is responsible for most of my music taste, but did you know my mom is also really cool? As a disclaimer, if you were to make a Venn diagram of my parents’ respective music tastes, it’d be just shy of a circle, but there are some pretty vast differences that I’m glad I was able to be raised with. Though my mom will blisteringly disavow Madonna’s modern… well, it feels wrong to say evolution, so we’ll just call it incarnation, she was also once a super important part of my Mom’s early life that has since influenced her art. Oh, you don’t know about the it-artist and oracle deck illustrator everyone’s talking about, Sabina Espinet? Featured in galleries like La Luz de Jesus, her Sanctus series of paintings paid tribute to the pop-cultural figures that became her guiding light as a teenage Colombian immigrant learning to fit in and stand out. Some Saints—in the regalia of her ill-fitting Catholic upbringing—helped her understand American culture, while others helped her break free of it (all this before every single artist at comic con was cranking out geek patron saints at alarming Funko Pop rates, by the way). Madonna, canonized as Patron Saint of Irreverence, modeled the mercurial teenager for her in part by turning her own childhood Catholicism on its head. Though every adult seems to forget it, this punk bucking of established norms is an extremely important aspect of maturation—much like tilling soil, the old guard must be disrupted before they can be integrated. Funnily enough, though, everyone that’s still stuck as a teenager seems to forget the maturity that comes next, and that’s where my mom cuts off her faith in Madonna, so to speak. It’s been really inspiring to see her embracing what she calls “crone-hood” (even though fifty-three is barely even old!) and reclaiming the elder feminine, which stands in stark contrast to Madonna’s vampiric obsession with her own youth these days. Still, there was a brief, shining moment when, at least from the perspective of someone looking back, Madonna embodied graceful maturation, and “Ray of Light” captures this fleeting impression perfectly.
Even listening from the backseat on the drive to kindergarten, I knew there was something different about “Ray of Light.” Not that I don’t rock with provocative pop Madonna, but the gulf between the (some might say grating) girliepop pep of “Material Girl” and the centered excitability of “Ray of Light” within the same genre is staggering—both can be pop, but where one is sassy and satirical, the other is still a blast while sounding distinctly grounded (I’ve always sounded this lame, by the way. I’m at the function like “say gang, can’t we use our inside voices?”). No matter how pompously I pontificate about this song, I can’t make it not, as the kids say, a bop—it’s a perfectly-paced electronica firework, not so much exploding as shimmering fast and descending slow. Much like a time lapse, its spastic and sizzling beats overlay a vaster movement forward that I can’t quite place. I don’t know if it’s the guitar’s tranquil harmonies, Madonna’s voice richening with age, or just the fact that club beats with a hypnotic regularity make me a little bit sleepy sometimes, but this song has always seemed to me to be celebrating from a deeper place. As a kid, I was never really sure of the magnitude, but having misheard the chorus as “And I feel like I just got born” (someone ought to tell her that’s not how you say it, but it’s already out, so I’m not gonna be the one to do it), I attributed this song’s spiritual jubilance to a cathartic rebirth, and was accidentally correct.
Likely just to validate me, Madonna had, in fact, experienced a sort of metamorphosis during her writing process—rebirth by way of giving birth. After the birth of her first child, Madonna found herself attempting to clarify the greater existential context of this new life, this ray of light. Though she was raised catholic, if “Like a Prayer” is anything to go by, she was never exactly a traditionalist—in an interview supposedly catalogued in her biography (though I can’t find it corroborated anywhere), she herself states “although I am Catholic in my bones, I am looking for something else in my blood.” Though for me it was quite a surprise, her post-millennium fans will already know well that after a journey exploring eastern faiths like Hinduism, Madonna now has hardcore mystical Judaism coursing through her veins, which has unintentionally given us the gift of numerous gossip listicles explaining the Kabbalah that read like an alternate universe Buzzfeed (really scratches the Clickhole itch). Just like her expression of Catholicism, though, she has since clarified that she doesn’t consider herself a practitioner of Judaism:
“Am I Jewish? I mean, some people would say, well, you do a lot of things that Jews do, but I would say I do a lot of things that people did before Judaism existed. And I believe what I practice has to do with something deeper than religion, that it embodies all religions, including Judaism. And Christianity. And Islam.”
Perhaps due to this spirit of spiritual exploration, Madonna partnered with cutting-edge producers like William Orbit to create an experimental sound that, at least reportedly, pushed the boundaries of what mainstream could be, influenced by the futuristic sounds of electronica, trip-hop, and breakcore (though as a side note, I’m pretty skeptical of the idea that this is what brought electronica to the mainstream. In 1998, The Chemical Brothers were already topping charts, the Dust Brothers were already featured in movies, Nine Inch Nails, Björk, and Massive Attack were all experimenting with it in the indie scene, and Luscious Jackson, Big Audio Dynamite, and many more were underground, like, a decade before, but many seem to think of this as defining the sound of the late nineties, so… the Dude abides). The ensuing album, Ray of Light, is regarded by music historians and fans alike to be her magnum opus, and its title track exudes exactly why. In isolation, lyrics like “She's got herself a little piece of Heaven / Waiting for the time when Earth shall be as one” and, that’s right, “And I feel like I just got home” read clearly as the experience of coming into her spiritual self—an especially powerful experience after creating a life and, perhaps in doing so, brushing up against the source of life itself.
Much as I’ve been into all this spiritual hooey lately, there’s a radiant enormity here that can encompass a number of equal interpretations. When creating the music video for “Ray of Light,” director Jonas Åkerlund also heard a time lapse in this song’s composition—a timely aesthetic for the bittersweetness of rushing towards the new millennium. I know just about anyone can do a time lapse these days, but contextually, it’s no wonder this video won a Grammy in 1999—corny sunset bridge aside, this video perfectly translates this song’s exuberant soundscape to the language of fleeting life.
From the outside, this seems like the perfect picture of wholeness and harmony, so where did it all go wrong? Of course, maturation isn’t a straight upward trajectory that plateaus at its peak, and I’d never hold Madonna (or anyone) to a static image of her best self, but as much as I’d hate to be some kind of Y2K downer, I’m not sure this perceived maturity was ever Madonna’s influence in the first place.
In terms of the song itself, much of “Ray of Light” wasn’t even written by Madonna. For example—did you know that “Ray of Light” is a cover? That’s because it’s technically an original composition (I’d have labeled it as such otherwise, who do you think I am?), but almost entirely not by Madonna. Though I praised her lyrics earlier, these mostly came from duo Curtis and Maldoon’s song “Sepheryn,” a sullen, late-sixties acoustic affair. It’s a little too Simon-and-Garfunkel-turtleneck-melancholy for me, but it suddenly makes sense why these words are such a departure from Madonna’s usual voice—she only made some choice tweaks to Curtis and Maldoon’s words, such as, uh, changing the title. Even using these lyrics wasn’t her idea, however—these were sent over by producer William Orbit, alongside the demo for his original instrumental composition… s0, you know, basically the entire song. As we’ve spoken about with other not-just-one-man bands like Hozier and David Bowie, it’s inevitable that collaborations like these get relegated to the liner notes, meaning their authorship is attributed to the main musician by most listeners, and that’s just showbiz, baby. In all fairness, Madonna shares authorship with Orbit, Curtis, and Maldoon transparently in the record’s credits, with the latter two getting 15% of the royalties, which they have said they are essentially living off of. Still, as we spoke about with Pip Millet’s not-cover “Hard Life” [Reviewed 02/02/2024] earlier this year, I always feel a little cheated in situations like these, you know? I know it’s sort of naïve to think anyone that famous is writing their own music, but then why do all the history books say it was Madonna herself going through a period of experimental growth? Like, no she fucking wasn’t, unless you’re talking about the experimental growth of her cheekbones. Okay, calm down, too far. Still, if the long history of mainstream covers is anything to go by, I’d wager that nobody would’ve batted an eye if “Ray of Light” had been overtly labeled a cover of “Sepheryn,” although if any time travelers would like to tinker with this and see, let me know in the comments.
Even if it’s true that Madonna only provided vocals and edited lyrics for “Ray of Light,” though, surely it’s not a statement about her newfound wisdom, right? I’m in no place to say who’s experiencing the divine correctly, but on closer examination, even Madonna’s spiritual epiphany smells a lot like Los Angeles opportunism from where I stand. Studying the Kabbalah itself is something of a unique circumstance, considering that it was restricted for specifically married, male Rabbis over the age of forty until the 1950s, when Rabbi Philip Berg split from orthodoxy and established the Kabbalah Centre with his wife in LA. Now, let it be known that I am all about democratizing divine communion—there are few things I’m less “all about,” actually—but the Kabbalah Centre as an institution has come under fire for (maybe predictably) using its mysticism as exploitative celebrity flypaper. Though it’s pedaled medical misinformation about cancer-curative spring water, employed manipulative donation tactics classified as “financial malfeasance” by the FBI, and generally been lampooned as "opportunistic offshoot of the faith, with charismatic leaders who try to attract the rich and the vulnerable with the promise of health, wealth, and happiness” by the media, I think maybe the best testimony of the Kabbalah Centre comes from Madonna’s brother, Christopher Ciccone. Having been urged to join his sister and sit in on a class, Christopher left with the impression that this celebrity study group wasn’t studying the Kabbalah very closely—he called it “breaking down your ego in a room full of egotists.”
Ultimately, I can’t speak to how much this reflects Madonna’s personal faith, neither then nor now. If my mom’s judgment is to be trusted—and I’d advise you all do—then Madonna has unfortunately succumbed to some serious vapidity, at least in her public persona. Still, even if she’s responsible for none of what makes “Ray of Light” weightier than the rest—not composition, not lyrics, not spirit—once this moment of maturity existed in her, I believe it can never be erased, only buried. In the midst of all her modern immaturity, I found myself increasingly worried as I read about her enthusiasm for the state of Israel during her Kabbalahfication era—there’s no way, I thought, she hasn’t made some sort of faux pas by now. As awkward as it might have been, though, in her October 2023 speech onstage condemning the war neutrally, I feel a ray of light might’ve shown through again, if only for a moment. Hopefully this can be an opportunity for further reflection going forward, and maybe even a rediscovery of that fleeting wisdom. For now, though, I’ll stick to listening to my mom instead.
Pairs Well With: “Let Forever Be” (The Chemical Brothers), “Breath of Life” (Erasure), “Naked Eye” (Luscious Jackson)
CAROUSEL | Siouxsie & The Banshees Criminally, though I’ve written about several of their more obscure side projects such as The Creatures and The Glove, I haven’t spoken about Siouxsie the Banshees themselves on Songs of the Week, and that’s likely because I was probably introduced to them in utero—by the time I started blogging again, they weren’t exactly a fresh discovery. Where Madonna came straight from my mom, this is one of those many bands from the intersection of my parents’ near-circular Venn diagram of music (Siouxsie Sioux also made my Mom’s pantheon of Saints as Patron of Darkness). I must’ve been born a disappointment, then, because for most of my life, I never really liked Siouxsie or any of her Banshees. I know, I know, I’m not even sure how to defend myself here—what’s not to like? If their cover album’s title, Through the Looking Glass, is any indication, Siouxsie and the Banshees are well-read and rounded in all aspects of counterculture and proto-nerddom, and these countercultural proto-nerds leave no stone unturned in their storytelling. Much like Iron Maiden, they’re so much more than their spooky iconography—they’re well-travelled thespians with pockets full of collected tales. Though I’ve always been drawn to the stylization and halloween themes surrounding goth, I think this third element of exaggerated theatrics just isn’t my cup of tea. Even as a kid, I just wasn’t about the whole idea of putting on a show and pretending to be something you’re not—you know, “ACTING!” “THE THEATRE!” with vibrato. That’s not to say I didn’t play imaginary games as plenty of characters, but as I began to individuate, I either played out scenarios as an omniscient viewer or simply acted as myself on fantastical adventures. I mean this neutrally, but as someone so in touch with my inner self—my feelings, my values, my callings—becoming someone else has always felt viscerally cringe to me because it feels so disingenuous, and I have a hard time being anyone but me. Then again, it would be silly to ask a goth to dial back the drama—might as well roll me a boulder and call me Sisyphus. Performance is the essential third component to the stylization and darkness of the goth movement, and though I was raised in an environment where I was free to be in touch with my truest self, I know well that wearing a mask of something monstrous or strange is, for many wounded weirdos, a cathartic way of being oneself by invoking the spirit of the countless rejects that have come before. Goth is theater because it compensates for the neglected emotions our culture relegates to darkness, and if I’m going to truly roll with the outcasts, I’ve got to be okay with that.
Still, it takes a certain sort of individual to embody a greater persona so wholly without an insincere quality, and when this performance component outweighs its accompanying atmosphere and emotions, I have a hard time buying the rest. This, I think, was my initial Siouxsie hangup, though I doubt I would’ve had the words for it back then. I remember being surprised that Siouxsie and the Banshees were supposed to be a spooky band—especially in contrast with other music I’d been exposed to, such as Love and Rockets or The Cure, their sound seemed flowery and baroque by comparison. Of course, after Kate Bush’s bardic sensibilities unlocked my hidden love for the best flowery and baroque things, I’ve become far less skeptical of operatic, theatrical songwriting, and I’ve been meaning to pay the Banshees a forgiving visit ever since. Though I still maintain that they’re not always nearly as eerie as their genre peers, when taken on their own terms, Siouxsie and the Banshees are so much fun—they’re genuinely well-read, creatively diverse, and not nearly as spooky as they look, which I suspect is exactly the point.
Well, now that I’m done yapping about how Siouxsie and the Banshees aren’t that spooky and how that’s cool too, let’s u-turn to talk about a legitimately spooky Siouxsie song and how it’s way better than anything else they’ve done.
Kidding! I’m just joshin’ ya!
I’ve been excited to listen to Peepshow for some time in part because of its theatricality, but I won’t lie when I say “Carousel’s” overt eeriness isn’t also a major factor. For some perspective, “Carousel” is exactly what I wanted from Siouxsie and the Banshees as a kid—this chilly, creepy piece delivers on its title’s promise with slow-burn circus music that accelerates to a cackling, jack-in-the-box ending. Though I just gassed up Siouxsie’s literary allusions, her lyrics here are an original vignette of the childhood fear in a fairground after dark; an account of how funhouse mirrors, rickety rides, and garish smiles can so easily turn grotesque. It’s such an insightful and evocative vignette that unearths the origins of our fascination with the dark—it’s been said again and again, but there really is a thrill to dipping into the unknown, and it’s amazing how easily it toes the line between fun and fear. In the dark, we are all children again—not just because we are vulnerable, but also because anything is possible when it’s just out of sight. Siouxsie’s words capture this everyday trepidation or fascination with just as much bravado as any horror classic. A funhouse becomes “Grotesque dwarves in mirrored rooms / Pulled and taut, a thousand you's / Staring back through stinging tears / Remembering those fun house thrills.” Looking down at your parents with regret from a rollercoaster’s crest becomes “A dragon dives and soars on tracks / The hands that strap you to its back / You turn around and look behind / Their smiling eyes won't help you down.” Even the kitschy glitter of carousel horses in darkness becomes “Oh, painted vile in lurid hue / The snarling horse that waits for you / Its motor whirrs and colors curl / Inside your head, the monsters whirl,” and that rocks, right?! Arguably just as brilliant, though, is that the music itself whirls, mimicking the rising tension of a carousel ride. Though this song starts at a crawl, it’s plenty creepy enough to keep rolling towards a crescendo that conjures up jittery, dancing clowns in some haunted silent film. It’s an excellent, self-contained song and a great listen for, like, three to four weeks ago. Hmm, can you tell when this was scheduled for, maybe?
As a sidenote—Jim Noir’s “When I Sleep At Night” is a surprisingly great pairing with this one, but it’s only available via the Jim Noir Club Collection over on Bandcamp. Worth a listen there… and maybe a dollar? Or maybe a few more for the full EP Special Features of a Camel? Hmmm… worth considering, maybe….
Pairs Well With: “Clown Dream” (Danny Elfman), “When I Sleep At Night” (Jim Noir), “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep” (The Cure)
HAMBURGER LADY | Throbbing Gristle Well, now that we’ve done spooky, let’s get into the truly scary. I, uh, did not think I would get here from a surreal Minecraft horror reel, but surprise—
Content Warning: burn trauma, motor vehicle trauma, maiming, dismemberment, torture, self harm, sexual abuse, homicide, infanticide, genocide.
I’m being straight up right now, that’s not a checklist of everything horrible I could think of, that’s just what happens when you listen to Throbbing Gristle. I’m going to be brief and vague in my discussion of most of these things, but seriously, there’s no shame in not wanting to engage with them, so please skip ahead if you’re not up to it. Ready? Let’s begin.
So, I always make jokes about being a total poser, but when it comes to industrial metal, it’s actually true (I mean, I know nothing about galvanized steel and the like). There was a time in my life where I regularly said I loved industrial metal, but what I was talking about was really just the pop of the genre—Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and Ministry may have caused their fair share of pearl-clutching, but they’re truly the tamest and most accessible industrial, and that’s probably thanks to their hybridization with electronica and new wave. When it comes to groups like Skinny Puppy, Pigface, or the genre’s grandpappy, Throbbing Gristle, I’ll admit I’m not always hardcore enough for some of these needlessly hostile auditory assaults. It’s not so much that I don’t enjoy abrasive and avant-garde sounds, even when they’re designed to be skin-crawling—Songs of the Week past should be a testament to that—but the kind of artist that relishes their audience’s discomfort is rarely going places I want to follow. That’s probably why my parents—industrial fans themselves—drip-fed me industrial around the age of fifteen before I went digging into the real raunchy, repugnant stuff on my own. When I have inevitably explored the industrial scene solo, though, I always stumble across some disgusting torture porn that, as a teenager, I thought I had the stomach for, but quickly lost it as an adult. Even so, when I find some freaky experimental horror music—especially in a silly, absurdist context that’s not immediately offputting—it’s hard not to peek. That’s exactly how I found Throbbing Gristle’s “Hamburger Lady:”
Let me just say that as an ambient soundtrack, “Hamburger Lady” is absolutely hair-raising in all the right ways (well, not all of them, get your mind out of the gutter). The instrumentation, if you can even call it that, is masterfully tense. Doppler revving constantly closes in on overstimulation before sinking back into the murk, every measure keeping listeners on edge (actually, I wouldn’t call it edging a jumpscare, but Throbbing Gristle would probably want me to). And those echoing, modulated wails that trickle in near the chorus? Just bone-chilling. Front-person Genesis P-Orridge’s similarly shivering vocals have almost too much reverb to be decipherable, which I’d consider a mercy if you’re hoping to continue listening to this song as just a terrifying soundscape. Still, with a name as non-sequitur as “Hamburger Lady,” I was foolishly too interested not to investigate further. As much work as the music is doing, I found, it’s the guts of this song that actually make it so stomach-churning.
As we’ll see momentarily, Throbbing gristle founder Genesis P-Orridge was a putridly prolific figure in the UK’s underground art in the eighties, and when you’re as openly twisted as they were, you’re bound to attract alike minds. Enter poet Blaster Al Ackerman, famous for his mail art under various untraceable pseudonyms. Though his full body of work is difficult to track down due to these measures of anonymity, he exchanged many fictional letters with P-Orridge, the most famous of which became the basis for “Hamburger Lady.” I’ll spare you the details, but Ackerman, likely drawing on his experience as a medic in Vietnam, writes P-Orridge under the guise of a med tech working with a nigh-unrecognizable burn victim nicknamed “The Hamburger Lady” by her caregivers. In this context, the echoing revs takes on a far more sinister context as a constant, hallucinatory flashback to the motor accident which left her scarred. In gruesome detail, the letter explains that the woman, viciously scorched from the waist up, essentially should not be alive but is forced to maintain her grisly existence by the medicine her doctors give her, perhaps written as criticism of the Hippocratic oath. I’ve often wondered (though not around any kind of twisted genie folk) if, in the absence of an afterlife, no possible pain could be worse than death because at least you’d still continue the miraculous, perhaps singular chance you’d get to be alive, but circumstances like these and Metallica’s “One” have kept me up many a night weighing which hell would be worse—literal nothingness or being trapped in an inoperably wounded body. As Ackerman’s narrator writes, “When somebody tells you that there is a level of pain beyond which the human mind cannot retain consciousness, please tell them to write me.” For me, though, the most viscerally haunting part is where this poor woman gets her nickname: another tech, who handles himself quite well around her, only loses his composure when he leaves the room and sees the nurses eating chile-mac that’s the exact texture of the woman’s scorched skin.
So, if you’re like me, you’re probably thinking: “why would anyone ever fucking write something like this?” To be honest, once I’ve taken a soul shower after listening, I’m almost ready to defend its existence. Like a Terrifier movie, this kind of senseless, abject horror is just par for the course with Throbbing Gristle. Their song “Slug Bait,” for example (truly listen at your own risk), is sung from the perspective of a serial killer as he tortures a young family, first maiming and killing the husband in front of his pregnant wife, then murdering the mother and unborn baby with unspeakable creativity (again—why?). Much like “Hamburger Lady,” this song seeps a coldness into my bones that leaves me staring at nothing in particular for some time, but the two have less in common than this initial feeling suggests. This insightful and eloquent review I found not puts it into words best:
“[W]here the psychopathic imagery of “Slug Bait” is defanged by its very extremity, “Hamburger Lady” meditates on, and evokes, a horror that is all too insidious, and impossible to ignore, by vice of its very banality. […] The protagonist of “Slug Bait,” a killer who murders a young family and revels in the retelling of his actions, is an outsider. The protagonist of Hamburger Lady, a caregiver who sees to her "tubes" which presumably deliver medicines and pain drugs, is an agent of society's care.”
In other words, though I’m sure there is real, historical precedent for the bleak violence of “Slug Bait,” it essentially depicts a boogeyman for adults—it’s exceedingly unlikely that anything so unthinkably evil could happen to you or anyone you know (and, all you genie-type folk, I’m really begging you not to prove me wrong on this one). The “Slug Bait” killer is not only an outsider, as the reviewer puts it, but no more real than the monster under your bed—a provocative personification designed to elicit disgust. As a reaction to conservative censorship in the UK, this appears to be Throbbing Gristle’s overcompensating M.O.—shallow and rebellious provocation to make the squeamish squeal. I think there’s a case to be made that “Hamburger Lady,” by far their most popular piece, has such staying power because it’s based on someone else’s work—work that, while similarly stomach-churning, is coming from a subtly different place. The poor Hamburger Lady is no victim of Mr. Evil McKiller, but rather of all-too-realistic circumstance. Again much like Metallica’s “One,” “Hamburger Lady” is an actual statement of substance because it shines harsh fluorescence on folks normal society really does ignore, and, in theory, that makes it a sympathetic work. Like it or not, horror is healthy, and I stand by that—as with all trauma, ignoring what’s monstrous only leaves it to fester until it erupts as something far more insidious (“the more you deny, the stronger I get”). Unlike “One,” however, I’m not sure there’s really textual support that this is actually a compassionate piece that is intended to engage with horror as healing. While calling the burn nurses “pleasant smiling zombies” is a pretty edgy judgment of someone’s obvious coping strategy, I can forgive it as part of the character’s subjective voice; saying “from the waist (waste?) up everything is burned off,” on the other hand, just feels like a cruel pun. As I mentioned earlier, there was a time in my teenage life that I was able to stomach this masochistic wallowing because I thought I’d be weak for looking away—that this is life, this is reality, and that’s just what being an adult is like. Speaking now as an adult in the actual adult world, I just can’t give self-indulgent provocation like this nearly the time of day I once did precisely because these things do happen, but life is too precious to be spent worshipping them in self-flagellating observation. I’m not about to say what art should or shouldn’t exist—that’s exactly how art like this gets made—but when hearing it conjures images of Ukrainians on bombed subways or Netanyahu’s “tragic accidents” in Rafah, the contrarian, “makes you think” spectacle of “Hamburger Lady” feels a lot like insensitive, pretentious superfluity. Yet if name-calling and censorship is what creates such outrage bait, what’s to be done about Throbbing Gristle?
As a kid, I never bought into tricksters in fiction—no bridge-troll, Rumplestiltskin, coyote, or even classmate felt worthy of fooling the hero, and I think that’s because they were written by heroes, not tricksters. I’ve always been gullible, but I nevertheless saw through tricksters’ ruses because their lies were innocent and transparent. It’s only after spiraling into Throbbing Gristle’s misanthropic nihilism that I realized what a trickster really looks like in my lifetime: the contrarian provocateur who can convince anyone the collapse is here long enough to waste their precious life. Much like healthy horror, the trickster is a necessary archetype for debasing comfortable assumptions and, as we talked about with teenage Madonna, “tilling the soil” to rejuvenate dated standards and stories. Life, truth—these things are ephemeral, fluid, and we cannot fall prey to the equally dangerous assumption that equilibrium is the default. Still, in acknowledging the trickster, we cannot take them at face value—we actively make the world as misanthropic and nihilistic as Throbbing Gristle says if you believe them. If the reports of P-Orridge’s abusive, often sexual coercion from their bandmates—leading to ludicrously depraved, self-mutilating performance art worthy of a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape (once again, read at your own risk)—are anything to go by, these figures sedate their inner instability by externalizing it, and letting the trickster take the wheel is exactly as destabilizing as it sounds (“Need to contaminate, to alleviate this loneliness / I now know the depths I reach are limitless”). The trickster in me has convinced me many times that “acknowledging the darkness” means keeping constant tabs on it, when that’s simply not the case—that’s called paranoid obsession. Times get tough, and there’s a reason we tend to pathologically ignore these things in the first place—they’re inherently unbearable over extended periods without some incentive to keep surviving. But here’s the thing: it’s a beautiful day, so unashamedly, go enjoy it. When the darkness comes—and it always does—let it wash over you. It will pass of its own accord—no need to hold on. Remember: recognizing the depths does not negate the heights.
Pairs Well With: “Epilogue” (Skinny Puppy), “And Even the Vegetables Screamed” (The Legendary Pink Dots), “Bodies” (Tall Dwarfs)
TROUBLE WITH BOYS | David Bazan Well, I thought this Bazan song wouldn’t be nearly as rough as the last one, but this Bazan dude’s got some baggage. Let’s unpack, I guess…
If you’d have only heard Bazan’s older work with christian indie-rock group Pedro the Lion, I’d forgive you for thinking his style stopped with crunchy, grumpy guitar and rich, low vocals—even his increasingly synth-assisted solo work is still largely bristly and guitar-driven, from what I’ve heard. The foggy, atmospheric synth loops and melancholic, echoing vocals of “Trouble With Boys,” then, might seem like a sharp departure from Bazan’s usual style, but I’d say his emotionality flourishes in this environment. With such a low vocal register, I’m shocked I never connected Bazan with sadboy (no, sad MAN) Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields (most known for their hit “The Book of Love”), but in this wry and wistful context, the two sound nearly identical. Hell, they even look alike, plus or minus a paperboy hat and vest. Truly, “Trouble with Boys” has all the pieces to be fantastic Magnetic Fields sad-pop—a down-in-the-dumps loop that sounds like kicking rocks and rainy, dusk vocals interjecting the sulking with a sarcastic snip like “All your trouble with boys / Like you're making a choice” or “Your stepbrother smirks that it has / Nothing to do with your Dad.” As sad-pop that doesn’t ruin your overcast day, “Trouble With Boys” excels—like, I’m serially devastated by the smallest of things, but honestly, this song is great for enjoying an overcast day, no sadness required. I was even content to leave it that way, but I just had to go digging for more. Luckily, what I excavated is more of a warm-fuzzy cry than something actually devastating.
If you’re less inclined to enjoy “Trouble with Boys” as sad-pop and more as just sad, then look no further than its simple music video—Bazan’s daughter runs in slow-mo down away from a suburb cul-de-sac while her dad, fading in and out, tearfully stares down his viewers.
Momentarily suspending analysis, the moment I saw this video’s thumbnail, I could already envision this slowed-down sprint—the tempo really lends itself to the shot of her shoes, suspended in midair, falling one after another onto the pavement, and I think it’s really neat how naturally it translated. To be honest, I’m unclear as to this song’s context before it was released, though the image of a daughter breathlessly fleeing her crying father sounds like something too personal to deduce from my perspective (although the fact that Bazan’s daughter agreed to film it would indicate that things are probably better than that description sounds). What made this song really hit home, however, was realizing when Bazan chose to release it—November 11th, 2016. In the video’s description, writer and friend of Bazan, Kathleen Tarrant, reflects on when she first previewed this piece:
I wept because even back in the halcyon days before the results of this election, as a woman (a white, privileged woman) I have been told my value lies in my relationship to men. I am a daughter, a sister, a girlfriend. Never a human. Never allowed to sever the umbilical cord that I was taught to wrap around the wrists of the men who love me. Never pushed out the door and told to run.
Never told that just because I am, that is why I am worthy of love.
And just because I am, means I am worthy of my humanity.
[…]
Dave woke up [the morning of Trump’s election], unclear how he would explain to his own daughter and son about what had just happened in our democratic republic, and realized he needed to put that video out out now.
[…]
I watched Dave cry, staring down the lens like the barrel of a gun. I watched a white man tear himself open and let his daughter be a person while knowing that the world may be cruel to her because of who she is. I watched him let her run away, and give her love because she is, not because of what she is.
And man, doesn’t that just rip your heart out? Especially coming from Bazan—a former Evangelical Christian forced to make his painful breakaway from conservative values in the public eye—it’s a beautiful, personal affirmation that has the power to impact so far beyond his family. The simple act of a father telling his daughter that no matter what trouble boys give her, she is worthy of love—an act unfortunately far rarer than it should be—is so powerful in isolation, but especially as a small, shining resistance to the overwhelming sentiment of a country yearning for an oppressive, fundamentalist fiction. As Tarrant says, when Donald Trump was first elected, “we [women, immigrants, LGBTQ+ folks, POCs] had just been told by a wide margin that we were not worthy. That because we are, we are less.” Even as a white-passing, cis, straight man, I remember a real feeling of mourning the day Trump was first elected. Like Bazan’s daughter, I remember leaving my house that night without a fully conscious reason as to why and sitting on our road’s guardrail, looking at the stars. He won—it wasn’t a joke anymore. Would I have to set aside my hopes and dreams in life to help protect the lives of my immigrant, queer, and nonwhite family and friends? Of course, it’s been eight years and we’ve all survived, give or take a grossly mishandled pandemic and an economic crash—of course we have, because Trump’s bark is far bigger than his bite, and his businessman threats of putting muslims in camps, endorsing conversion therapy, and building a wall to keep out those spooky Mexicans were as hollow as his beliefs. Yet the fact that America had chosen this feckless, bloviating mouth as its figurehead means that there are multitudes of voters who wholeheartedly stand by Trump’s parodic hyperbole—and if their bear-poking since 2020 is anything to go by, their bite is far more real, and I worry we haven’t seen the worst of it.
I know this is sounding a little melodramatic for someone who’s not getting bombed or raped or stripped of a say, I know this is sounding a little savior-y for someone who’s not in any danger, and I know this was definitely supposed to be just a music review. Nevertheless, this is the world into which “Trouble With Boys” was released—one on the brink of something far worse. I’m writing this on November 5th—Election Day—and I’m tired of all this the teetering, but no matter the outcome, we all have the power to be what Bazan is here for his daughter. Of course we need practical solutions, of course we need political action, but remember: love is the only way through, and you all are worthy of love.
Pairs Well With: “All the Umbrellas in London” (Magnetic Fields), “On a Different Shelf” (Jim Noir), “Big Bad Wolf (Live)” (Shakey Graves)
THE DOOR | Jessica Ruan A treasure I found while leisurely perusing Instagram, “leisure” of course being the sensation of having my brain dissolved alive neuron by neuron while interfacing with the sum total of the human idiocy, curated for my consumption. Wait, what was I talking about? Right, sorry, “The Door” rocks, right? You all know me well enough to know the scale and the style really do it for me here, but this one in particular—its lighting, its angle, its colors—rocketed me back to a similar dream I remember having as a kid of turning corners into large, empty rooms and finding myself face-to-face with some kind of beast. The thing I ran into was, if memory serves, a twenty-foot-tall, purple furball perched upon six arachnoid legs and staring down at me with a veiny, cyclops eyeball, but this big kitty will do, too.