Thursday, November 19, 2009

Smoke, blood and moonlight.

I don't like a-melody. I don't like yelling, rasping, or noise in songs. I don't like unhewn recordings.

That having been said, there is one album in the world that I can't pull myself out of, and it has all of those things. And they are as right as the moon in the night sky.

This album is Bone Machine by Tom Waits. I try from time to time to convince myself that my favorite Tom Waits albums are maybe Mule Variations... maybe Real Gone... Maybe even Alice. But then I play Bone Machine. And I am put into a different world and reminded, very aggressively, that this album, THIS album dammit, is the one that owns my soul, and don't forget it again, little girl. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

This is not the first time I've listened to this album, and it won't be the last. I first heard Bone Machine when I was 17. It's been with me ever since. It was the first thing I could ever describe as "just right." The songs on it are noisy, they grind and pound on you, they get dust in your lungs and smell like stale beer and dried blood. I should hate them. I should need never to hear them. I should want them to die. I like melody and harmony, I need clear tones, prisms of refined sound in my songs. This has none of that. It's raw and primal and it eats me alive. And I love it.

This album reminds me that I am a woman, simply because of how much throbbing testosterone flows through it. I just about beat the inside of my car to pieces listening to it on the way home tonight. It makes me need to be around men, smell sweat and age, to feel the scrape of an unshaven cheek against my skin, strong arms around me, a little too rough, a little too hard. Never hard enough.

First the Earth Dies Screaming, and you feel the ravaging chaos, society gone, back to aboriginal times, only blackness and simplicity. Then we're all just Dirt in the Ground; a slow, agonizing dirge. But then you're pulled back into a frenzy with She's Such a Scream; halo, wings, horns and a tail, shoveling cole inside my dreams, she's such a scream. By the time you get to The Ocean Doesn't Want Me, if you're not seeing dark and mysterious pictures before your eyes, there's something wrong with you. What a piece of prose, that one. But then... then you get to my four favorite songs, all in a row, with no hope for escape. First In the Colosseum is there to whip me with chains and squeeze lemon juice into my cuts, and make me want more, but before I can recover from the debauchery, I'm hit with Going Out West... I almost don't even have words for how much I love this song. It's so... it's so good. It's the manliest song I've ever heard. It puts hair on MY chest (and I have a lot of chest to cover). But once you've ripped a phone book in half because of Going Out West, you get pulled into a dark, dusty fairy tale with Murder in the Red Barn. I always imagine myself singing this song in a smokey club, wearing a black dress with ripped stockings, nursing a whiskey on the rocks, "Cause there's nothing strange about an axe with bloodstains in the barn; there's always some killing you got to do around the farm." Finally, you get to Black Wings, which is the most lovely song ever written. If Black Wings was the bible, I would find religion.

God, my mind is trapped in a different land. I will never sleep again, and the sun will never rise as long as I keep listening to this album. It hurts me. I need to touch someone right now, and I need them to like it - to NEED it as much as I need it. My skin does not belong on my body.

Whew. Music does things to me...



(Originally posted on May 19th, 2008)

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