Back into the darkness...
Balance saying the word "something" over and over and over? Not as fitting or dynamic an opening to this second volume as I would have expected*...or so I thought until an obsidian box opens and the howling ice ghosts from the first volume come streaming back in like the wind from the North Pole. Then, the voice of Balance tells us: "I know why the bird cage sings / it's wrapped its song round everything."
Touche, Coil...touche.
"Tiny Golden Books"** begins with a shimmering, broken melody. This is so much brighter than anything else we've heard on volume one. The track continues to develop with more (uncomfortable) light permeating the air in the form of uneasy pipes. Coil has done something pretty novel here; they've shown us that even light itself can be dark. A phrase that occurred to me was: pyramids of black light, submerged in dark water. Suddenly, a mangled voice barks something unintelligible, increasing the listeners feelings of unease; this isn't a safe place. Admittedly, the beat (which sounds like Sonic the Hedgehog 2 being played on the TARDIS) makes things a little less unsettling, but they remedy that real quick like when the frantic Decepticon starts dropping Biblical shit on us:
Dark they were, with golden eyes
Brought golden books from darkened skies
Every word from every world within was written down
They read it all aloud to us with silver tongues of fire
That licked the sun and stars and moon
All space became a choir
Shining shining shining then they left without a sound
Then they left without a sound
Then they left without a sound
Say what you will, but these guys can write some angelic/bible/apocalypse shit like nobody's business.
Having spoken its prophecy, the robot angel takes flight, leaving us to ponder the meaning of its words and clean the shit out of our pants.
"Ether" sounds pretty much exactly like what you'd want a song called "Ether" to sound like: blurred, muddled, wavy, looping, impaired. After a bit, the sounds form a limping sort of beat and some cabaret piano gets thrown in for good measure. Balance's distorted, watery vocals join the chorus and he begins to tell us all about ether, both the anesthetizing liquid and the...uh...nothing. The lyrics are stream of consciousness almost, words and phrases that sound like each other are repeated with different emphasis, changing their meaning and impact ("it's either ether or the other", "it's what it's there for, for therefore"). There's a lot of great consonance and assonance here. This is a bit like the lyrical style Marilyn Manson has taken such a shine to on his last few albums, but done well.*** Overall, the feeling one gets from Balance in "Ether" is that of sorrow and not of menace. There's clearly something wrong with the speaker. Maybe because he's drinking the shit and not just huffing it. The song ends in a sufficiently creepy manner, with Balance's voice becoming slower and slower, repeating the phrase, "to turn my mind off", until it's little more than a drawn out slur of sound. They nailed it on this one.
Thus far, the darkness that pervaded volume one of Musick to Play in the Dark hasn't really been overwhelming present here, but on "Paranoid Inlay", there's a version of it. Here, it's almost campy or spooky as opposed to frightening or threatening; kind of "Scooby-Doo scary". The beat is tiny, like those on the majority of volume one and there's a harpsichord which is just perfect for the mood on this. The lyrics, if they were growled or snarled or braked, could be unsettling, but, with the music as it is and with Balance sounding more like Gavin Friday, the whole thing comes off as merely whimsical. Another really solid track.
I had one thought when I first heard "An Emergency": this is a mother looking for her child in a snow covered wood and finding it, dead. Aside from her cold and pleading voice, there is a creaking harmonium and nothing else. This is only about a minute long, but it's chilling.
The penultimate track, "Where Are You?" is connected to both the previous track and to the first track from volume one, "Are You Shivering?' both lyrically and sonically. Here, Balance takes on the role of the father of the aforementioned missing/runaway child, the medium hired to find it...or the child's killer; or, more likely, all three. He asks questions that are a bit too specific to just be questions and the tone of his voice is just sinister enough to raise suspicions, although he doesn't ham it up at all here; I've always found that a quiet and restrained Balance is more frightening and effective that a ranting, raving one. Musically, this has another tiny beat that almost sounds like Morse code. There is a repeated musical phrase played on either a muted piano or some gently plucked strings and it feels very Silent Hill, as does this whole song. The world created between these two albums would fit perfectly into the Silent Hill mythos.
"Are you bathing in moonlight or drowned on a beach?"
"Have your wounds grown wings? Are you feasting on fears?"
"I can see your dark corona is eating into you"
"I'll wrap my last kiss in a bandage"
God damn.
The final track on Musick to Play in the Dark, Vol. 2 is just a flat out masterpiece. "Batwings (A Liminal**** Hymn)" is, musically, stark: an electronic noise like a lost radio signal can be heard throughout as well as a more subtle permutation of the howling ghost wind from the opening track and another simple, musical phrase, this time played on keyboard. Those three, spare elements create the perfect background for a song that feels sacred and still, that has lyrics like a list of ingredients for a potion or offerings to a god, that was played at the funeral of John Balance. Just as I start thinking this song can't get anymore beautiful, anymore fitting as the closer to these two volumes, the list stops and the singing begins. One voice at first, then two, and then, finally, three, singing, boldly and sadly, in a transcendent, made-up language that sounds like a combination of Latin, Italian and Arabic. This is a staggeringly gorgeous end to a fascinating set of albums.
Aside from "Something", this has been one of the strongest Coil albums I've experienced to date, both musically and thematically. Not only did they explore the less common uses of the concept of "dark" here, but they did it in such a novel, unique fashion. Then there is "Batwings", a song that is almost too fitting for the ceremony signifying Balance's passing from this world. Despite the title of these albums, I'd never be able to listen to them in the dark, not because they're spooky or scary, but because Coil has so clearly defined exactly what it is in the dark that we should be afraid of, they have shown us why we are afraid of the dark, and the consequences of facing it.
* Although, one has to admit it fits with the theme of a song called "Something".
** A phrase which appears in "Glowworms/Waveforms" from their Summer Solstice EP.
*** I thoroughly enjoyed The Golden Age of Grotesque but nothing much after that. If you don't believe me, read my review of his latest noisy fart, Born Villain.
**** From the Latin word limen, which means "threshold".
