As the brains behind the tongue-twisting pop shards of Frog Eyes and (with Destroyer's Dan Bejar and Wolf Parade/Sunset Rubdown's Spencer Krug) one-third of Swan Lake, Carey Mercer's wordy lyrical conceits often meet his aural ambitions head-on. Classical phraseologies are bleated over serpentine arrangements; the results are often as confounding as they are strangely appealing. You could liken it to a very abrasive book on tape.
As Blackout Beach, Mercer retains that same attention to scope and language. That project's 2004 debut, Light Brings the Putrid Dawn, was an admirable albeit disorienting trip, with song contours often aimless or difficult to follow. As Mercer wrote in a note to Pitchfork a few months back, Skin of Evil is his attempt to stay on task. Here he's succeeded: Using minimal instrumentation-- itchy drum machine, ripples of guitar-- and sounding like Nick Cave or Scott Walker, Mercer's crafted a loose concept album about a siren named Donna and the many men left wrecked in her wake. It sounds like another academic exercise, but it's at once gloriously claustrophobic and engaging from start to finish.
Mercer introduces his subject on first single and opener "Cloud of Evil": "I think there was men before me, who were too scrambled by Donna's awesome, awesome power. But did any of them ever fly?" Moving forward, there's mention of blood-filled goblets and castration, though neither Mercer's trademark delivery nor his grand poetics ever threaten to upset the sonic universes into which he catapults them. Skin of Evil's textures and rhythmic bend exist in eerie harmony with his cries, barks, and stutters, with each chapter swimming seamlessly into the next.
All in all, this is a remarkable feat in atmospherics. From the storms of standout "Three Men Drown in the River" to the crescendo of "Nineteen, One God, One Dull Star", Mercer's able to fill cavern-like spaces with the might of his many soliloquies. Easy listening or not at all, it's why Skin of Evil-- here and gone in just 30 minutes-- remains so gripping: Some turns are capable of provoking a physical reaction. Some aren't. But no matter how off-kilter the sense of theater or disturbing the image, he and his listeners remain in constant, enveloping conversation.
