In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well—some inspired by a weekly theme and some not, but always songs worth hearing. This week: songs about ghosts.
The Fall’s Mark E. Smith is a man haunted by ghosts—not just the lingering memories of the many musicians and ex-lovers he’s fired from his band, but also the many tormented souls who walk the cavernous halls of his clattering, still-churning post-punk institution. Over the years he’s sung (or, by his own admission, shouted) about ghosts in manners both serious and playfully metaphorical, as in the band’s popular novelty cover of R. Dean Taylor’s “There’s A Ghost In My House.” But rarely did he capture the spirit of spirits like on “Spectre Vs. Rector,” one of the most unsettling songs the band ever recorded in its prolific 37-year history.
Smith, an avowed fan of writers such as H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James, structures his nearly eight-minute dirge like one of their classic horror stories, complete with chapter headings. (He also calls them out directly, invoking, “M.R. James, be born be born / Yog Sothoth, rape me lord”—a reference to Lovecraft’s creation—as an opening incantation.) Over a growling, dingy bass—the song’s own cobwebby madhouse atmosphere achieved by recording it in an abandoned warehouse, then having Smith overdub his own vocals to create a delirious echo—Smith revisits a common-to-The Fall theme of possession, telling the tale of a specter from the town of “Chorazin,” the cursed village near Galilee where medieval priests expected the Antichrist to be born (as referenced in James’ story “Count Magnus”), and the innocent clergyman whose form he assumes.