I don’t like to brag, but I'm no stranger to extreme music. The rawest, most evil and primitive black metal hold no terrors for me, nor does the sickest and most retarded grindcore. I will happily listen to Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, SPK and Stalaggh long past the point at which normal people would be begging for mercy, and I actually fell asleep listening to Brighter Death Now on the train earlier this evening. Japanese noise isn’t my first port of call for musical pleasure, but if the mission calls for it, I'll listen to that too. So transgressive diva Diamanda Galás is very unusual in having made an album which I found literally intolerable to listen to. Fortunately, it’s not this one.
The Galás album which proved too extreme for me was 1996’s Schrei X, a ‘solo work for voice’ which consisted of Galás screaming for a solid hour in a darkened room. Guilty Guilty Guilty, Galás’ 17th album, and her first release since 2003’s La Serpenta Canta, is considerably more user-friendly, consisting as it does of cover versions of, well, songs. You know, with proper music and stuff? Sooo much less avant-garde – and yet sooo much more pleasant to listen to. In this respect, Guilty Guilty Guilty relates back to Galás’ earlier albums of interpretations of songs from the blues, jazz and country repertoires, albums like 1988’s You Must Be Certain of the Devil and1992’s The Singer.
Galás accompanies herself on the piano through seven tracks recorded live at performances in New York and Auckland, New Zealand. Featured songs include ‘Heaven Have Mercy’, originally sung by Edith Piaf, ‘Long Black Veil’, the Lefty Frizell murder ballad best known for its rendition by Johnny Cash and also covered by Nick Cave on his covers album Kicking Against The Pricks, and ‘O Death’, originally performed by bluegrass musician Ralph Stanley and popularised by its inclusion in the soundtrack of the film O Brother, Where Are Thou? Galás is renowned for her three-and-a-half octave range and virtuoso vocal technique, and her singing is quite unmistakable. Whether you actually find it enjoyable or not is, of course, a matter of personal taste – I can enjoy it for a track or two before starting to find Galás swooping up and down the octaves like a hungry bat a bit wearing. Her relatively restrained interpretation of ‘Long Black Veil’ was the highlight of this album for me.
www.mute.com
www.diamandagalas.com
