Cum morning
My beads on a face
We hear the music anew: the orgasmic, caged-animal moans; the promise of “all of the trembling vein you could bear”; the attainable, surely-he-wouldn’t “pearl necklace” pun of “Rosary”; and the ultimate, large aural signpost:
I kiss holes for the bullets
In case of thigh
An ideal Walker gag: On an album condemned to seem hopelessly mental, the grand finale is, in some dimension, the confession of an orgasm addict—a howling paean to misbegotten blow jobs and the lustrous drizzling of semen on pores and skin.
Walker’s last lyrics within the Sundog e book—all written in the direction of the tip of his life, and sadly unrecorded—wade additional into filth: one “dildo-smacked cheek,” two erections (one “mighty,” one “vengeful”), a requirement to “dump on me for cash,” one “nipple-zit” (“sucked”), a “felch” made flesh, and a refrain of “Thrust to shove/Like my love.” You’ll be able to peg Tilt as the primary masterpiece of Walker’s elliptical period, however “Rosary” illuminates a less-documented path: away from the sugared, black-coffee existentialism of Scott 4 and towards an indecorous, Brel’s-eye view of the species.
Even with out his Rabelaisian wit, his ethical depth, Walker would stay canonical—a North Star for failures in all places. Listening to Tilt, letting that nice fingers and mouth pull me into the void, one thought retains leaping out: What a reduction you could even do that.
However is it good? Permit me to reply a query with a ques—solely joking. Sure, Tilt is sweet. Scarily, maddeningly good. It’s like an previous mansion filled with haunted arcana: revolving bookcases, secret rooms, a golden pouf to perch on sipping historic eau de vie. Even the simplest pleasures, just like the stained-glass dawn in “Bouncer See Bouncer,” come up from such obscure environment their magnificence is at all times sudden, a second too fast on your defenses.
Then once more, Tilt will not be so good that you need to lock it away in a trophy cupboard. It’s an album you may hearken to. A gravitational weight, sure, and unhealthy firm in crowds, however not all that inhospitable. He welcomes you to go in simple, trusting your creativeness. You’ll be able to internalize the sound cues, the rattling chains, the freighted blackouts and sparkles. Or you may hunt for his passionate emotion, hidden however determined to be discovered inside the lyric sheet. Rummage for psychic flotsam, cross-examine the non sequiturs, reverse the verses, noun the verbs, discard what gained’t match, squint and twist and flip till an inkling—of maternal neglect, American hubris, or another unutterable factor—shimmers into view, as if by a frosted window.
To intercept Walker’s indicators may be brain-mangling work. You’ll be able to lose a night to it, head hitting the pillow filled with flowcharts with issues like “‘tooth fairies’” on the prime and “incest?” on the backside. You may discover that work torturous. However I need to counsel it is rather like the torture that made “The Electrician” sing: the lethally intimate zap, from the crank to the groin to the center, that feels, for a second, like love.
