087: The Singer, by Diamanda Galás

Diamanda Galás (USA)
The Singer (1992)
10 tracks, 46 minutes
Another album that doesn’t seem to be easily available for streaming or download in the UK. I found seven of the ten tracks on YouTube, so I’ve stuck them in a playlist for you, but if you want the whole thing, let me know and I’ll sort you out.

Probably the most exciting thing when you’re a music fan is that moment you first hear something of the sort you’ve never heard before but it grabs you immediately – you have no idea what you’re listening to, but you know you love it. Listening to Diamanda Galás for the first time made me feel exactly that way. To be honest, I’m not sure I can even really tell you what it is now, but I can try…

Diamanda Galás’ fingers, when they come into contact with a piano or electric organ, tease out avant-garde jumbles of notes. They’re something like amorphous clouds of sound: heavy on the sustain, sometimes dissonant, and usually favouring the lowest registers of the instrument. But then a blues note will come and go in a swirl. The note comes back again and attaches itself to another, in a cluster. That builds into a lick, and then suddenly she’s playing some of the bluesiest lines while somehow still in that disorientating avant-garde frame. Then comes her voice.

She has the voice of an opera singer trained in hell. She can turn it on a dime, from a powerful, full-chested boom, to paper-thin screeches that would make a blackboard cringe, to menacing, throaty rasp. At times she sounds legitimately possessed. Put that together with her piano, it all sounds positively demonic. If she hits you in the right frame-of-mind, it can be absolutely terrifying.

Like some other things I’ve covered here, The Singer is not an easy listen. It’s uncomfortable and it’s intense and weird and I absolutely love it. This album in particular is a set of blues and gospel standards, played as if they have been percolated through the nine circles. But they lose none of that bluesiness at all. See what I mean by checking out ‘Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?’ It starts off plaintive and creepy, and descends (or, ascends) into operatic shrieks of accusation, the piano keeping the tether in the earthly plains throughout.

I’ve not heard anyone else even approach what Diamanda Galás can do. I don’t even 100% get what she’s doing, but I know she’s doing it exactly right. It’s marvellous stuff, and great music to listen to while you scare the kiddies on Halloween.