A House for the Dead and a Porch for the Dying

Williams sounds for all the world like the progeny of David Bowie, Crash Test Dummies with music and lyrics from Andrew Lloyd Weber in the final stages of cerebral cancer.
With track titles like 'The Dead Hymen' and 'Thumbelina Toad Slut', one could be forgiven for expecting some tired nerve-shredding Death metal diapason.
Instead we get something quite splendid, almost primitively unique.
The songs, or dirges to be more accurate, delve into human anxieties, madness and perversion, the bizarre lyrics combining well with the symphonic instrumentals.
'Little Sap and Varicose', a blackly humorous number concerning a young boy watching his grandfather have a heart attack while masturbating, is particularly good.
Other highpoints include 'Sandra Lindsey' a slow, enigmatic number with lyrics like: "Nephew's nibbling on a portion/of his girlfriend's last abortion/No scrotum of my son will be a cathedral/for maggot, mealworm or boweevil."
The fact that Williams doesn't sing, more recites witha croaking groan, makes it all the more strange and alluring.
The whole thing is a euphonious celebration of body fluids, aborted foetuses, disease, and death.




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