MARY AND THE BOY

When I put on a record on Low Impedance[1] I don’t have any expectations, but I certainly did not expect to be confronted with a female voice somewhere between Patti Smith and Anthony Haggerty singing a capella about black terror, newborn children, Jesus and sucking cocks. So I put down whatever I was doing at the moment, sat down and listened. I was in for a ride. When I came back, I was breathing heavily, sweat on my brows, I felt like what people tell me a SM-session leaves you feeling like. Exposed, vulnerable but also stronger and more self conscious. Goddamn.

During these three quarters of an hour I was beaten, mangled, tortured, my soul blackened and then erased, lectured about the depth of moral and psychological decay, wrangled and twisted, stretched out and flattened again, and then set back onto where I was and left there breathing hard. I was confronted with sexual imagery, apocalyptic nightmares, psychotic behaviour and manic sarcasm. Mary and the boy are mercilessly consequential, harsh and straight forward and they take no prisoners. If they want to punch you in the face, figuratively speaking, they will do so. They also don’t mince their words. On top of a massive soundtrack of droning noise organs and guitars and collapsing vaudeville pianos they spit forth big words in big gestures. This trio, Mary (voc), the boy (instruments) and a dancer called Exotic, don’t care for the details, the small or microscopic things, they aim right at the middle with all their force. The various musical parts stand in the room like John Wayne stands in front of a group of men he is instructing to fight a last fight to death. In between these there are holes as big as a canyon to fall into. Heavy shit, indeed.

A lot of people will say this is some kind of cabaret for fans of industrial music, and a lot will mention the Dresden Dolls, but the Dresden Dolls are pop music in comparison. This trio is fucking heavy and pitiless, they burn up a dosis of energy more reminding of Laibach or SPK or early Swans while musically sounding nothing like them. And having been recorded live, makes these songs even rougher around the edges, more brutal and in your face. With the poetic brutality and agressiveness of Lydia Lunch. A lot of people where you always wonder how they lead their every day lives, because from the way they behave on stage or on record you think they must be pretty outwards of what is considered normal by your grandparents. Poor Jesus Wiley.

And then they dense all of this into these songs, that are one massive hunk of sound after the other. Those one word titles of songs stand like a poem of holes punched into the concrete by themselves: “birth. Death. Mama. Cock. Black Terror. Prayer. Jesus. FuckMe. Death.” They give all away that their show is about. Did you realize that “death” is mentioned twice? Fortunately, there seems to be an amount of irony and humour mingled deep into these songs, like the sugar that is used to make salad, but maybe it is just the hope of finding it, that makes it appear as if it glimpes out from somewhere down below there. Because if all of this was meant seriously, then that would really give you something to think about. Sweet shit.

They take up interesting issues along the line. For instance hyperinflating the current “jesus is your buddy”-campaign of the Catholic church. Would those thousands of young kids and teenagers that went to see the pope wave back at them, tell them to not have abortions or sex, sing along to “I talk to Jesus, I walk with Jesus, I rock with Jesus, I make love to Jesus. …But I never get bored with Jesus.”? Me, I especially like how they take their piss at church gospel at the end of the song. Because, no matter how grooving and how well sung those Sister Act type songs and shows are, they are still in praise of a god, that, if he exists, is cruel, heartless and violent. (Well, the same is true for Nick Cave, but then Nick Cave knows this, whereas those gospel choirs always sing about love and mean hate.) Aren’t we all nothing but sinners in the end? Shouldn’t we all bow down and repent? Ask for forgiveness? There is worse places to start than this one here.

[1] Aside all the talk about the new way of promoting, distributing and finally listening to music via the internet or the new times, I still believe in the philosophy that a label stands as a gatekeeper for a certain genre, taste or attitude towards music and that a label can / should be a brand of quality, this certainly is true for Low impedance (Mormo, Tokyo Mask, The missing ensemble, et al.).


	MARY AND THE BOY – s/t (CD, low impedance)

	When I put on a record on Low Impedance[1] I don’t have any expectations, but I certainly did not expect to be confronted with a female voice somewhere between Patti Smith and Anthony Haggerty singing a capella about black terror, newborn children, Jesus and sucking cocks. So I put down whatever I was doing at the moment, sat down and listened. I was in for a ride. When I came back, I was breathing heavily, sweat on my brows, I felt like what people tell me a SM-session leaves you feeling like. Exposed, vulnerable but also stronger and more self conscious. Goddamn. During these three quarters of an hour I was beaten, mangled, tortured, my soul blackened and then erased, lectured about the depth of moral and psychological decay, wrangled and twisted, stretched out and flattened again, and then set back onto where I was and left there breathing hard. I was confronted with sexual imagery, apocalyptic nightmares, psychotic behaviour and manic sarcasm. Mary and the boy are mercilessly consequential, harsh and straight forward and they take no prisoners. If they want to punch you in the face, figuratively speaking, they will do so. They also don’t mince their words. On top of a massive soundtrack of droning noise organs and guitars and collapsing vaudeville pianos they spit forth big words in big gestures. This trio, Mary (voc), the boy (instruments) and a dancer called Exotic, don’t care for the details, the small or microscopic things, they aim right at the middle with all their force. The various musical parts stand in the room like John Wayne stands in front of a group of men he is instructing to fight a last fight to death. In between these there are holes as big as a canyon to fall into. Heavy shit, indeed. A lot of people will say this is some kind of cabaret for fans of industrial music, and a lot will mention the Dresden Dolls, but the Dresden Dolls are pop music in comparison. This trio is fucking heavy and pitiless, they burn up a dosis of energy more reminding of Laibach or SPK or early Swans while musically sounding nothing like them. And having been recorded live, makes these songs even rougher around the edges, more brutal and in your face. With the poetic brutality and agressiveness of Lydia Lunch. A lot of people where you always wonder how they lead their every day lives, because from the way they behave on stage or on record you think they must be pretty outwards of what is considered normal by your grandparents. Poor Jesus Wiley. And then they dense all of this into these songs, that are one massive hunk of sound after the other. Those one word titles of songs stand like a poem of holes punched into the concrete by themselves: “birth. Death. Mama. Cock. Black Terror. Prayer. Jesus. FuckMe. Death.” They give all away that their show is about. Did you realize that “death” is mentioned twice? Fortunately, there seems to be an amount of irony and humour mingled deep into these songs, like the sugar that is used to make salad, but maybe it is just the hope of finding it, that makes it appear as if it glimpes out from somewhere down below there. Because if all of this was meant seriously, then that would really give you something to think about. Sweet shit. They take up interesting issues along the line. For instance hyperinflating the current “jesus is your buddy”-campaign of the Catholic church. Would those thousands of young kids and teenagers that went to see the pope wave back at them, tell them to not have abortions or sex, sing along to “I talk to Jesus, I walk with Jesus, I rock with Jesus, I make love to Jesus. …But I never get bored with Jesus.”? Me, I especially like how they take their piss at church gospel at the end of the song. Because, no matter how grooving and how well sung those Sister Act type songs and shows are, they are still in praise of a god, that, if he exists, is cruel, heartless and violent. (Well, the same is true for Nick Cave, but then Nick Cave knows this, whereas those gospel choirs always sing about love and mean hate.) Aren’t we all nothing but sinners in the end? Shouldn’t we all bow down and repent? Ask for forgiveness? There is worse places to start than this one here. [1] Aside all the talk about the new way of promoting, distributing and finally listening to music via the internet or the new times, I still believe in the philosophy that a label stands as a gatekeeper for a certain genre, taste or attitude towards music and that a label can / should be a brand of quality, this certainly is true for Low impedance (Mormo, Tokyo Mask, The missing ensemble, et al.).
	www.lowimpedance.net
	10/2007