THE FALL: I FEEL OCCULTISH

"Goth" would probably not be the first word I'd use to describe the Fall - probably not in the top 20, really, &c.

But I DID just use it in my earlier post in reference to the sorcerrific intro for 'Lay of the Land,' did I not? - and it IS kind of ominous weather out in the NYC, what with the lighting and everything [ed: written last night - why does it take so fucking long to upload this shit??] - so, why not? FYI I know that I am using and 'goth' and 'gothy' here kind of incorrectly, maybe, I'm not really familiar with actual goth culture (other than The Cure, which doesn't count, right?), and the term kind of demeans the real depth and weight of MES's project here. Maybe 'occult' would be better, but 'goth' is kind of snappier, less reverent, definitely funnier, thus my choice. Anyway -


MES has an extreme and deeply felt case of H.P. Lovecraftophilia, and on some album insert or other (not sure, don't have them all here) quotes this passage from The Call of Cthuhlu that kind of sums up Lovecraft's amazing take on horror *:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Holy shit, terrifying, right?! In Lovecraft's universe, mind-bending horror and insanity don't interrupt our otherwise-normal lives, they exist right alongside, or underneath, reality as we perceive it, monsters everywhere if we know how to look **. Which, thematically, is a perfect fit with MES's post-punk existentialist absurdism, his constant juxtapositions of the mundane and the bizarre, cutting up daily lifeish observations with jagged shards of paranoia and fragments of the occult.  Let's get ghoulish -

THE FALL - R.O.D., which actually could have gone on the last post, since it leads off perhaps the Fall's most overtly 'dark' album, Bend Sinister ***, lyrics aqui. This song is really a perfect transition from the last post, if I do say so myself - it's almost like the gothy younger brother to 'Lay of the Land.' IN FACT, this seems to be hewn from the same gravestone as that "lay, lay, lay" intro, MORESO than 'Lay of the Land' itself.  He even uses the same 'zombie voice' as LotL after the first chorus, as he names the song by its awesomely GOTHY real name: REALM OF DUSK.  REALM OF DUSK!!!

Pummelling drums, axe murderer-style guitar scrapes, then MES: "it's approaching / six hundred pounds / of gas and flesh / it's approaching / lips and tongue abhorrent / flickering lexicon." WTF, this is scarier and more atmospheric than like 75% of The Cure's gothiest moments. Of course, it is not even the Fall's first, nor its gothiest moment, which would probably be -

THE FALL - SPECTOR VS. RECTOR is fucking amazing, from 1980's Dragnet album, the extremely Lovecraftian, yet also extremely MESian lyrics are a fully realized horror epic in several parts, a story of a hero versus rector possessed by spectre attacking inspector. The language is stunning, with MES-epic style narrative mixed with lots of Necronomiconic incantations:

part four: detective versus rector
detective versus rector possessed by spectre
spectre blows him against the wall
says "die latin this is your fall
I've waited since Caesar for this
damn latin my hate is crisp
I'll rip your fat body to pieces"

m.r. james be born be born
Yog Sothoth rape me lord
Sludge hai choi choi choi soi

Yog Sothoth, WHAAAT??  The production is a case study in lo-fi brilliance, the breakdown at 3:50 is fucking piss-yourself scary, suddenly all these cellos start sawing away on your ears like they were Cary Elwes's leg in that Saw movie, then MES-as-exorcist:

I HAVE SAVED A THOUSAND SOULS
THEY CANNOT EVEN SAVE THEIR OWN
I'M SOAKED IN BLOOD BUT ALWAYS GOOD
IT'S LIKE I DRUNK MYSELF SOBER
I GET BETTER AS I GET OLDER

!!!!!!!W-O-W!!!!!!!

THE FALL - HARD LIFE IN COUNTRY, which I got off the Hip Priests and Kamerads comp, lyrics here. It's kind of like southern gothic, the revenge of the red staters! First it's all very charming -

Look at yourself as a man
The valley rings with ice-cream vans
It's good to live in the country

But then the country folk get all lynch mobbed out on a dude:

The villagers
Are surrounding the house
The locals have come for their due
It's hard to live in the country

Also notable are incredible lines about "D. Bowie lookalikes permeate car parks... New Jersey car parks permeated by D. Bowie." This isn't really that gothy or occulty, I guess, but it's got that great Fall-in-ominous-gothy-mode sound, yeah?

MES kind of toned down on the gothiness for a few years in the late 80s/early 90s, but he's brought back these themes with bone-chilling vengeance in recent years. Witness:

THE FALL - (WE ARE) MOD MOCK GOTH, from the 2003 (We Wish You) A Protein Christmas holiday single, lyrics here. This song is kind of monotonous in some aspects but obviously incredible in others - check out how freshly evil MES makes the normal vox-plus-pitch-shifted vox effect sound, and check out how his voice starts off kind of normal but how he sounds like a fucking DEMI-LICH (considered by many the most powerful of the undead) by the end. Also check out that awesome weird ascending metallic thing sample, wtf, great sounds on this.  A similar version of this track called "MAD Mock Goth" is included on the American version of the Real New Fall LP, which also has the propulsively incantatory

THE FALL - LAST COMMANDS OF XYRALOTHEP VIA MES, from the most recent and extremely excellent Real New Fall LP, released in 2004 on Narnack ('full disclosure': I am in Aa and Aa is also on Narnack, like that means anything), lyrics here. This is pretty fucking nuts, with weird babbling in the background, a relentless, unchanging beat that gets all stalker-intense by the end, and MES actually becoming possessed himself to deliver the titular commands of Xyralothep, who may or may not be related to Nyarlathotep, who is described by the awesome Cthulhu Lexicon as

the messenger of Azathoth and the one member of the Mythos who deals on a personal level with human beings in general. He is described, in his human form at least, as being of the old native blood of Egypt and looking like a Pharaoh. Wherever he visits, rest vanishes and the wails of nightmares untold echoes through the streets. Nyarlathotep is especially fond of technology and psychology.

Nyarlathotep appears in many disguises, but as stated earlier, the one constant is his bond with Azathoth, the Idiot God. He is described as the very soul of "gigantic, tenebrous, ultimate gods – the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles" which make up the Mythos. As such, his evil is absolute, for he is not only the servant of these creatures, but their very consciousness. Nyarlathotep has appeared through the range of time, from ancient Egypt where he instructed Nephren-Ka in the arts of the darkest magic, up until modern day, where one might find him traveling and spreading his terror where any will listen...

This Cthuhlu shit is so fucking awesome, no?  Browse The Lexicon,"a living encyclopedia of the places, people, artifacts, and creatures which populate the world of H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos," while simultaneously browsing through the full-text Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft if you want to be chilled.  Anyway, according to MES, Xyralothep is kind of a weird god that, like everybody else these days, has an axe to GRIND with the MSM:

avoid respectable television and respectable newspapers
they have neither the talent of art
nor the instinctive snout of the media

DEAD ON, GOTH E SMITH. Next installment - FALL TECHNO

* Another favorite Lovecraft bit of mine on a similar tip, in an earlier post here

** Lovecraft was from Providence, RI - if anyone would like to draw parallels between Lovecraft's sense of horror and the Providence noise, well, I think you could

*** Named after a Nabokov book that I've tried to read like twice but couldn't get into, it's like Nabokov-does-Kafka kind of, whatever