Sunday, March 30, 2008

Oh Dear Sweet Jesus What The Hell Is That Stench



The Moulettes - Devil of Mine

This song is about a showdown in a concert hall, a battle between holy and unholy instruments - posessed violins sharpening their bows and flinging them at one another, pianos launching heavy ivory keys at cellos, devils jaunting about scraping strings. It was a fight spilling over from a hell for instruments that refused to be played, with the Moulettes (and me, for I was there too, in all my terror) looking on in wonder, hoping not to get a splinter in the eye, or find ourselves attacked by a demonic viola.
Perhaps, to the commoner, this sounds ridiculous, but then, the layperson has never raised a Stradivarius to their shoulder, only to find their a-string attempting to strangle them. Instrumental posession is nothing new. Many a pianist has been swallowed up by their Steinway like a gigantic polished alligator, with ivory teeth chomping and biting. Drummers have been beheaded by Satan's cymbals, bass players slapped around in sick vengeance, wrists slit by wayward kalimbas.
All this the Moulettes explained to me, as we cowered behind a friendly consecrated piano, avoiding the fray - when suddenly, with a puff, and with an awful acrid rotten-egg smell, Ole Nick himself appeared, conducting the whole bizarre spectacle with a terrifying yellow-toothed smile - a smile that only widened when he spotted us.

What happened next I don't remember, but when I awoke, gin-soaked and posed quite awkwardly upon a dying cello, it was clear that the fight had ended. Now the Moulettes were playing, and playing something I had never heard before, something sweet and gripping, seductive yet weird, singing about the Devil and his music, and whose heart he held - and there he stood, Lucifer himself, gesticulating madly, conducting the band like puppets hanging on strings, cackling like a cauldron of cackling witch-whores.
But before he could finish his blasphemous hymn, there was a ghastly crash of notes, and our grand church piano leapt from the shadows to the centre of the room, sheet music flying about in his wake.

Wolf Parade - No One Saves The Day (live)

"Aaarrr" snarled the piano as he launched into song, ivory battling against skin, bones cracking all about like wood, splintering in and out of the song, a song which seemed to be the very sound of four instruments growling at four more, and every second seemed to hint at some sort of smash, and as I looked helplessly for the end of this sentence, Beelzebub, who had gotten particularly carried away, cast a Bizarre Time Changing Melody into the air, and I said, well, we're all fucked now.

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