David Cronenberg’s Wife -‘Don’t Wait To Be Hunted To Hide.’ (Blang)
This is David Cronenberg’s Wife’s third album, and sees the London band continue with an interesting and perhaps more than a little skewed (screwed!) take on life. If you could point to another act’s lyrics as to where DCW are coming from then Nick Cave’s ‘Up Jumped The Devil’ (‘I was born on the day that my poor mother died/I was cut from her belly with a stanley knife/my daddy did a jig with the drunk midwife). If it was a TV programme, it might be like The League Of Gentlemen, but set in the home counties.
Musically, it’s coming from a place where surf guitar and punk meet dirty, twisted blues and country, with the exception of the third track ”Such A Sweet Boy’ which on the surface at least, is more reminiscent of twee-pop and is in waltz-time. The characters are somewhat twisted – the man in ‘For Laura Kingsman’ tries to defend his affair with a teenage girl on the grounds that he ‘wasn’t her first’. On ‘Lonelyman’ the imagery is violence of a personal yet almost detached manner: ‘I woke up with a cigarette burnt out in my mouth -that’s the feeling that you get when your conscience headed south.’
In Pink Floyd’s ‘Arnold Layne’ single, you’re inclined to agree that whilst he might be a bit of a perv, he’s not a nasty sort of person; here the characters are much more lurid -yet horrifyingly fascinating. Some may not find this possible to stomach, but once you tune in (if!) there’s a very black humour and -whisper it -intelligence -on display.
***1/2
Don’t Wait To Be Hunted To Hide is out on Blang on December 3.