About If I Die, I Die (1982)
This experimental album is demanding and hypnotizing. It is no longer a rock band but a cult straight out of H. P. Lovecraft's novels, all to the glory of Cthulhu.The lyrics of “Sweethome Under White Clouds” are dropped like an incantation of an unknown people, occult shamans, creatures from a distant land, lost somewhere in the haunted desert of William Beckford's Gothic novel Vathek (1782), while a lost saxophone flutters in the night.
From the introduction “Ulakanakulot”, the instrumentalization takes us on a journey. We hear an anthology with, successively, a bass, slow percussions, a triangle, a soaring sound and its soft arpeggios on the guitar, cymbals and tambourines discreetly struck, a flute. One is then invited to a pagan ceremony. The lament of the dark and slow “Decline And Fall” corroborates this atmosphere. Gavin Friday sings like a Mephistophelian Ozzy Osbourne, belches, speaks with his nose and exaggerates all his words in an outrageous way, gritting his teeth or on the contrary blowing like a man possessed. During this time, the guitars distil a few notes, we make out a set of weird little noises, we dream while listening to the Arabic percussions, we let ourselves go, it's like a trance.
The Irish group found in prudishness a breeding ground for their ransacking. The saxophone goes into the high notes to tense up and the voices chant to the point of alienation (“Sweethome Under White Clouds”). Once initiated, you can then party as suggested by the catchy “Baby Turns Blue”, paradoxically danceable and almost disco in spirit. The goal is to conquer people's minds in order to make a lasting impression. All this is just a show, a staging, the ramblings of a troupe of actors. “Caucasian Walk” and its multiple voices that dialogue resembles a grotesque opera. Even punk as hell with “Pagan Lovesong”, a 1982 single added as a bonus track on the CD version, where Gavin Friday can't help but smirk on this heady song. Rarely have we been so disconnected from rock.
Browse all Songs and Lyrics published on If I Die, I Die (1982)