"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.
I blogged about this band once before - but I should note that I'd gotten a mislabeled copy of this song and thought of it under the wrong title for a few months. And all of this is Obscure enough that my confusion made it even worse.
The band is Harley Poe, which I think was a specific project/style for a while in the Aughts, not a long-running band. And my favorite song of theirs - among a lot of competition - is What's a Devil to Do?
I don't think Harley Poe was a joke band, but they were a focused one: they did songs on horror-movie topics (vampires, zombies, cannibals) in a low-fi acoustic style that sounded to me very much like early-period Violent Femmes. (But I didn't see anything from Harley Poe to explain the sound; they might have had a different touchpoint or explanation.)
This song is from the point of view of an evil man - given the grand guignol of so many of their other songs, I tend to assume he's the Antichrist, but the song itself never quite says that outright.
I was created down below
And if it's evil that you're planting
Then it's evil that will grow
Like most of the Harley Poe songs I've heard, it's over the top - but lovingly so, in a way that completely commits to the bit, in the same way that a blues song can be about the singer taming a tornado. And that low-fi sound rocks hard, especially here.
Now Jesus died for them, it's true
But what's a devil to do?
No comments:
Post a Comment