sovay | I want to reach my hand into the dark and feel what reaches back

Current Music: Tom Waits, "Watch Her Disappear"

I want to reach my hand into the dark and feel what reaches back

This is an odd one. I wanted to make a mix of demon lovers, so I wind up with a playlist that contains neither Sarah McLachlan nor Kate Bush—instead I've got Consonant, Jefferson Airplane, and My Favorite. Some of them are probably still too obvious. On the other hand, I had to filter out almost the complete works of PJ Harvey and Jill Tracy, who could furnish together a box set of love and other damnations. Really, I have a lot of demon lover songs. It's not intentional.

Christine Collister, "Midnight Feast"

Aren't you just ravenous for a midnight feast?
Old drooling moon is shining down on us at the end of the street
Damned if I do, my love, damned if I don't, my sweet
Dare I declare this morning love turned evening deep?

Mark Lanegan & PJ Harvey, "Come to Me"

Come to me
Light on my shoulder
Come to me
Burn your starry crown

Sam Phillips, "All Night"

You're all around, but I haven't found you
You're coming in, right through my skin

Morrissey, "Jack the Ripper"

And oh, you look so tired
But tonight you've presumed too much
Too much, too much
And if it's the last thing I ever do, I'm going to get you

Garbage, "#1 Crush"

You will believe in me
And I will never be ignored

Thea Gilmore, "Razor Valentine"

I love you like a murder, babe
I'm burying the bones

Concrete Blonde, "Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)"

Oh, you were a vampire and baby, I'm the walking dead

My Favorite, "Le Monster"

The halls were crawling with vampires, because after your shelf life expires
You're not a kid, you're a monster, monster, monster

The Dresden Dolls, "The Gardener"

The gardener's coming to collect
You wanted love, that's what you'll get

Siouxsie & The Banshees, "Green Fingers"

Where the sun won't fall, but it flourishes
See the pretty maids all in a row

Elysian Fields, "The Queen of the Meadow"

And I'm burning in her fiery fields
And I'm sleeping in her meadow
And I'm burning in her loving arms
The queen of the meadow

Bok, Muir & Trickett, "John Barleycorn"

As I was ploughing in my field
The hungriest furrow ever torn
Followed my plough and she did cry
Have you seen my mate John Barleycorn?

Jill Tracy, "Quintessentially Unreal"

And I know what it means to be a dreamer
And I know what it means to be alone
And I know exactly how I want it to feel

Pretty Balanced, "Permanent Guest"

I'm everything you wish that he could be
You never needed him—you needed me

Patricia Barber, "Persephone"

And as I leave you softly under the stars
Without a scratch, without a scar
Like hell on earth slipping under your skin

Kate Rusby, "I Am Stretched On Your Grave"

When my family think that I'm safely in my bed
From morn until night I am stretched out at your head
Calling out into the earth with tears hot and wild
For the lost soul of the girl that I loved as a child

Michael Smith, "Demon Lover"

The neighbors say that as they pulled away in his Chevrolet
His face began to change
And in the middle of that bright suburban morning
They disappeared in flames

Jefferson Airplane, "Comin' Back to Me"

Small things like reasons are put in a jar
Whatever happened to wishes wished on a star?
Was it just something that I made up for fun?

Consonant, "3 a.m."

I'm alone now in this room that smells of crime scenes
Too ridiculous to care it's 3 a.m.
All the things that we've forgotten scream for help in our dreams
I read that somewhere once and now it's true

PJ Harvey, "The Dancer"

'Cause I've prayed days, I've prayed nights
For the Lord just to send me down some sign
I've looked long, I've looked far
To bring peace to my black and empty heart

And a postscript. I couldn't find a place for this one anywhere in the playlist as it stands, but it has been dear to me ever since

strange_selkie included it on a college mix CD, therefore I present to you:

Poe, "A Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose"

Before her Joyce will babble and Pound has gone insane
And Eliot is paralyzed by thoughts of April rain
When she refused Lenin, he vowed to start a war
Stravinsky beat the rite of spring right there on the floor
And a rose . . . a rose is a rose

I'm going to bed. All bets are off on what I dream of.

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(deleted comment)

I think I have a live version of this somewhere that's just lovely and chilling.

I would love to hear that. It's one of my favorites. Do you know her "Drowned Lovers"?

(VERY NICE ANTIDOTE INDEED)

Vade retro te sparkly!

Vade retro te sparkly!

*snerk*

Nine

(deleted comment)

No, no I do not!

She uses the same melody and basic pattern as Nic Jones', but something about hers—possibly the emptiness in the arrangement that the song gradually fills in, from the repetitive, expectant guitar to the light-fingered pipes and percussion; it's a macabre sort of happy ending—makes me prefer it. Enjoy!

....man reading Chaucer's blogge really does affect my gramarie.

*snerk*

I still listen to both "All Night" and "John Barleycorn" obsessively--they're among the best songs anyone has ever given me (and frankly, songs you've given me comprise a very, very high number of the songs in that category...)

Can't wait, based on the lyrics, to try a few more of these--expect a report later.

they're among the best songs anyone has ever given me (and frankly, songs you've given me comprise a very, very high number of the songs in that category...)

Heh. Thank you very much!

Can't wait, based on the lyrics, to try a few more of these--expect a report later.

I'm looking forward. Enjoy!

shiiiiinay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome!

Bwa! Someone else in the world listens to Elysian Fields!

(And I am slightly obsessional about the song off Bubblegum. But I'm slightly obsessional about that whole album; there are about five stories in there waiting to be teased out.)

Someone else in the world listens to Elysian Fields!

Heh. I have to confess, I have mixed feelings about them: for every lyric as brilliant as the chorus of "Black Acres," whose eponymous territory could be the literal earth or the euphemistic name of some underworld, performed half as a delirious sensual invitation and half as a last plea for contact—

Touch me now, touch me
Black acres are claiming me
They're claiming me*

—there's another like "Rope of Weeds," which I should probably have fallen in love with, but I can't get around lines like "Night cracked like a skull . . . Wrapped its chilly tongue around my mast" or "The frigid moon was green upon my wicked scene." But there are a handful of songs I really like, and "Queen of the Meadow" is one of them.

But I'm slightly obsessional about that whole album; there are about five stories in there waiting to be teased out.)

I've only heard "Come to Me" and "Hit the City." What stories have you teased out already?

* This is also the song I associate with Margaret Ronald's "Bonefields"—It isn't just bone that changes down there. I do not imagine there's any causal relationship, but I encountered them within a few months of one another and they fused. Welcome to my brain.

I just love how their voices work together. I can stick "Passing on the Stairs" on repeat and just shut my eyes and sink into it. :)

What stories have you teased out already?

"Wedding Dress" has a one-quarter-written somewhat complicated thing of a story that has been refusing to come clear for over two years now; every so often I go back and poke at it, and the thesis still hasn't raised its head to stare me in the eye. And I'm not sure if it's a story or a novel anymore. So I wait.

"One Hundred Days" is going to be a M. John Harrison-esque moody wandering frontier space opera, once that accretes enough mass to be a real story. I have nothing but the feel of it, right now.

Likewise, "When Your Number Isn't Up" is moody forties crime drama, probably not even spec. When it accretes enough mass. So far there is a hotel in a mid-sized, run-down city in the South where people go when they want to commit suicide, and one person who botches it, and...

*pauses to go take notes on story that's just now unravelling*

--and I think it might get "Bombed" tacked on as the closing scene.

"Hit the City" goes somewhere. So does "Out of Nowhere". They're sitting in the casting room drinking bad gin and chain-smoking.

...and "Come to Me"? I'm saving for the most wrenching, gut-deep, solid beautiful ache of a love scene I ever put to paper.

(If you'd like, I can wrangle the rest of the album together for you.)

Thief'd. A lot. I'm at work and cut off from music on a computer, but I've got some things you might like to sample on the theme, since these songs are all going into a Blue Vervain playlist. I'll put them at my place tonight. Demon Lover Playlist Meme?

Android Lust "Another Void"
Can I compromise this lustful act of seduction
Admit to my crime, through my inaction

TV on the Radio "The Blues from Down Here"
From the depths I call you
And I'll be waiting patiently
Stuck here at the bottom of this well
It's not the last you've heard from me

Two Ton Boa "Serenade for the Crow that Fell"
Smoking fingers in your burning hair
for the exorcisms of a dirty girl...

Autumn's Grey Solace "The Unshakable Demon"
Take me on, heart of stone
Take me on in a mystic war

The Creatures (though you already have Siouxsie)"Don't Go to Sleep Without Me"
When I lie on my side
Feel my heart being crushed

Grendel "Dream"
In this dream, I found myself making love to a strange man. Only I'm having trouble you see; he's old and dying.

Andi Camp/We're from Japan "I'm on Fire" (Springsteen cover)
I got a bad desire...

Hungry Lucy "The High Price of Mistakes" (a.k.a. The Comet Lake Song)
Hold it all inside they said
don't you speak of this disgrace

Radiohead "Reckoner" or "We Suck Young Blood"
You are not to blame for
bittersweet destraction
dare not speak its name
dedicated to all you need
~|~
Are you sweet? Are you fresh?
Are you strung up by the wrists?

Gogol Bordello "Sex Spider"
...all the beautiful and homely
No one will slip away.

Unto Ashes "Spider Song"
Let you hang enraptured upside down
where you can't see
so that you will finally know
what it feels like to be me.

(deleted comment)

Another of the songs that didn't fit into this mix (because it was opinionated and difficult . . .)

Mm. That song goes in a related playlist, though I'm not sure yet what the theme will be. It will also contain a different Hungry Lucy song (Telltale Shot), and perhaps "Machine Gun" by Portishead.

I did notice that "Wuthering Heights" wasn't there, but that's more a general gothic romance... maybe it would fit with the other three songs above. It's a decision with which I agree.

I wanted this one on the classical mix, but I wasn't sure I could convince anyone else that it was an angry reverse Orpheus-and-Eurydike. It works just as well as a Fury.

ooh.

On second thought, "Sex Spider" is a little too light for this mix. Once it goes into 30+ song territory, then it's legitimate, but if you're going standard 14-20 range, no.

I don't think I had an original copy of "Love Cats" anymore (except on cassette), I do have a cover by Pilori which is interesting and strange, and a cover by Tricky which is pretty much sex on electronic media.

My first Cure song was from that album as well - "Head on the Door" and I discovered T.S. Eliot and Edward Gorey through the same book.

So I leave with another song I negelected to mention: "Unsaid Warning" by t.h.c. / George Sarah:

And now you say there's a devil flying through your head and it looks like me;
when you took my hand, you ripped my heart, bound my life and bled my dream.
So, sure I'll be the devil flying through your head.

Your comment seems mysteriously to have turned up in response to a deleted post, when I can see quite well for myself that it's right down there at the bottom of the screen. Evidently Livejournal does not love the demon lovers.

ooh.

Feel free to steal.

I do have a cover by Pilori which is interesting and strange, and a cover by Tricky which is pretty much sex on electronic media.

You had better post those now . . .

"Unsaid Warning" by t.h.c. / George Sarah

Will definitely, definitely want.

I've finally reconstituted the mix and listened. Good stuff. Definitely more than the sum of its bifurcated and horned parts.

...a cover by Tricky which is pretty much sex on electronic media.

Probably one of the few highlights on that album. And almost worth the price of admission...if only just missing it. It made me realize that the song didn't just have to be cutesy.

Demon Lover Playlist Meme?

Contagious! Very appropriate.

Android Lust "Another Void"

Another of the songs that didn't fit into this mix (because it was opinionated and difficult . . .) was Android Lust's "Stained":

I know what I want
I want to stop seeing red
I know what I want
I just want to see you dead

I figured if that wasn't demonic . . . But you'll note "Wuthering Heights" isn't on this playlist either; go figure.

TV on the Radio "The Blues from Down Here"

I'll see your blues and raise you grunge: Hole, "Use Once and Destroy."

I went down to rescue you
I went all the way down
I went down for the remains
Sort through all your blurs and stains

(I wanted this one on the classical mix, but I wasn't sure I could convince anyone else that it was an angry reverse Orpheus-and-Eurydike. It works just as well as a Fury.)

Two Ton Boa "Serenade for the Crow that Fell"

Also want. She sounds like a match for Placebo's "This Picture":

I hold an image of the ashtray girl
As the cigarette burns on my chest
I wrote a poem that described her world
And put our friendship to the test
And late at night while I was on all fours
She used to watch me kiss the floor
What's wrong with this picture?

Hungry Lucy "The High Price of Mistakes" (a.k.a. The Comet Lake Song)

Prrrr.

(That is all.)

Gogol Bordello "Sex Spider"

Another I couldn't find a home for . . . How do you feel about The Cure's "The Lovecats"?

We slip through the streets while everyone sleeps
Getting bigger and sleeker and wider and brighter
We fight and scratch and scream all night
Let's go and throw all the songs we know

The first Cure song I ever heard. I have since come to understand that this was like discovering T.S. Eliot and Edward Gorey through Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, which I also did.

Unto Ashes "Spider Song"

(a) Want.

(b) If you have not already read Caitlín R. Kiernan's Silk (1998) and Murder of Angels (2004), do so posthaste.

This is going to be a terrific meme.

But, but, where is the Recoil? "Want," yes, but also "Breath Control." Ooh, and Aqualung's "Strange and Beautiful," and Peter Gabriel's "Only Us." I suspect VAST would be disqualified under the PJ Harvey and Jill Tracy rule. Probably Lamb, too, who are fantastic at never letting you forget the connection between demons and angels isn't that they're opposites.

But, but, where is the Recoil? "Want," yes, but also "Breath Control."

"Want" started out in the original lineup, along with songs like Hannah Fury's "The Necklace of Marie Antoinette" and Peter Gabriel's "Intruder," but it didn't seem to mesh with the surrounding music. There may be another mix upcoming, with even more demons. See above comments to

watermelontail.

Probably Lamb, too, who are fantastic at never letting you forget the connection between demons and angels isn't that they're opposites.

I've never heard anything by Lamb. You should follow

watermelontail's suggestion: make a meme out of it. What is your demon lover playlist like?

I saw the discussion with

watermelontail, and when I started commenting and realized I had more than one song to suggest, it was clear a playlist was going to be in order. *G* A lot of the songs are ones on the soundtrack for the novel I've got in progress, which tackles demon lovers in ways figurative and literal. Whether that tackle wins the ball is yet to be determined.

I've never heard anything by Lamb.

My two very favorite songs are not of the demon lover sort, except in that way where one's about an angel and they're both about all-consuming love, so they are precisely of the demon lover sort. The first is "Gabriel,". The second is "Gorecki," bits of which were sprinkled through the movie Moulin Rouge. If you'd like either, I'd be happy to upload them. Along with my demon lover playlist when it's done. *G*

Oh. Lamb's "Heaven" is a demon lover song.

(Ignore annoying fanvid dialogue at beginning.)

I pondered that one, but I'm leaning more toward "Lullaby" and "Cotton Wool" at the moment. Definitely "Lullaby." I also pondered "One," but I think that one may only read as freakish to me because of my issues with the "two become him" approach to committed relationships encouraged in the mainstream and in one of the subcultures of my youth.

If you'd like either, I'd be happy to upload them. Along with my demon lover playlist when it's done.

I shall wait for the playlist. I'm very curious.

I'm de-VASTing it at the moment. I suspected that was going to be a problem. I haven't even looked at NIN or Deftones for similar reasons, though I think I can narrow myself down to a song or two from each. Kate Bush is a total lost cause.

...and after all my rambling, a demon lover song:

Jann Arden, "Could I Be Your Girl?"

Hide your heart under the bed and lock the secret door
Wash the angels from your hair won't need 'em anymore
Love is a demon and you're the one he's coming for
O my Lord

He's bringing sweet salvation let temptation take you in
He's every fear and every hope and every single sin
He is the universe the love you've been imagining
O my Lord

And I am ashes, I am Jesus
I am precious--
--could I be your girl?

Jann Arden, "Could I Be Your Girl?"

I'm going to have to start compiling a playlist of demon lover songs I got from people on my friendlist . . .

Love is a demon and you're the one he's coming for

That's deep PJ Harvey territory. Cool.

matociquala and I have a years-long argument going about whether this song is earnest or subversive. *g*

So we has!

Of course, I am now putting together my own demon lover playlist....

Of course, I am now putting together my own demon lover playlist....

Excellent.

Posted!

Enjoyed the piece in SIRENIA DIGEST. Nicely done.

Nicely done.

Thank you! I'm very glad you liked it.

And here it is, the very quiet hours of another night.

I was listening to the Lal Waterson version of "Midnight Feast" to transcribe the lyrics, and had finally gotten all of them but the line about the moon (I had "oh dueling moon"), so I typed the lyrics that I had caught into Google, and this entry of yours came up as the top hit.

Now I have all the lyrics. What a satisfying feeling. Now I'm closer to that poem I was going to write.

Also, now I've added the Christine Collister version to the Lal Waterson version (that I must have gotten from Greer? Or you at some past date) and the James Yorkston version you gave me the other day. Three versions of a marvelous song.

Also, now I've added the Christine Collister version

The links still work? Score.

to the Lal Waterson version (that I must have gotten from Greer? Or you at some past date)

Either is possible. I put it up as part of a sea-yearning mix in May.

and the James Yorkston version you gave me the other day. Three versions of a marvelous song.

It is one of my favorites: I am so glad it speaks to you.

I have a fisher poem up, although it may need another try. This one got co-opted by reality.

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I want to reach my hand into the dark and feel what reaches back

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