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Sunday, January 26, 2003
#22 Boxhead Ensemble, "Send in the Clowns"
Oldham did his homework. His subversions are smart. He knows enough about the song that he turns the waltz into a tango, remolding Sondheim's lavender-scented nostalgia into something very mysterioso, very acoustic guitar. And he stays true to the song's guiding trapeze metaphor while recasting it as a stalker song with the addition of a new verse: "Isn't it mumble/don't you have fear/I'd never ever let go/of you my dear." But he sings it just like Will Oldham always does, plumbing the depths of his actor soul. I'm durn playin' me a HICK! A DISTURBED HICK! Wait, wait...A DISTURBED CHILD HICK! Giving out a fierce fluttery soul whine, the kind that would get you stares and medical attention were you to do it in the middle of a street, protesting the existential void of nothingness in the pit of his soul! Which also happens to be nothing, too!
The more singing escapes the highly unnatural codes of properness, not just pitch and melody but also the genre expectations of screaming and shouting, when it reaches the edges and starts resembling what people sound like when they're in pain (psychotic episodes, blood & guts pain, etc.), the more it becomes a cheap, morally suspect method of grabbing the attention of those parts of our brain that, through a gazillion years of evolution, have become hypersensitive to those kinds of things.
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