“Cloud of Evil“
from the album Skin of Evil
2009
iTunes
Something evil this way comes. “Cloud of Evil” is the scene-setter for the second album from Frog Eyes/Swan Lake bard Carey Mercer’s Blackout Beach solo project, Skin of Evil, the follow-up to 2004’s Light Flows the Putrid Dawn. Mercer’s oracular bleats, largely indecipherable save for scattered fragments like “golden crescent of the sky” and “raise the sacrficial goblets” are out in front, accompanied by a guttural call-and-response backing vocal and booming choral harmonies. At one point Mercer appears to be describing a character named William, who is reportedly the boyfriend of Donna, the album’s lover-crushing protagonist. The instrumental accompaniment adds reverberant guitar fragments and hissing, minimalist beats. Wicked. Or wicked enough, anyway, until the album explains the rest of Mercer’s lofty tale.