Gramophone

Gramophone is the band you want to have playing the very first time you have sex with the person who you already know is going to break your heart. Dark, seductive and doomed, Gramophone unrolls the rhythm of the damned — one person damned because they want to care more than is really smart to do, and the other person damned because they couldn't care less about the fact they're going to crush someone else's spirit under their boot and just keep going.

Here's the question: Which of the damned would you prefer to be? Think carefully. There's a different sort of Hell waiting for you depending on your answer. No matter what, though, Hell is on the way, borne on the voice of an angel.

That angel being Penny McConnell, who, by the lyrics, has chosen to be the crusher rather than the crushee. Sliding her tone from understated Harriet Wheeler to medicated Bjork, McConnell chronicles one romantic disaster after the next, though she does so advertising up front that she's just bad news all the way around. "If I were you I think I'd let me go," she advises some poor bastard in "Lonely Machine." Not that he listens. Not that they ever listen. It takes two to tumble into the barbed wire pit.

At least McConnell makes it a lovely tumble — she projects "all screwed up" in that languid way that men sense as a challenge: Sure, she's chewed up and spit out every other guy that's come within a 30-yard radius of her, but I can handle her. Hope springs eternal. Guys, here's a tip: When some woman sings "Cigarettes on linoleum/ I walk barefoot on the butts," as McConnell does in the deceptively sprightly "Brighton Rocks," don't walk away. Run as fast as your deluded little feet will carry you. Of course, what do I know. Fine, go ahead. Mazel tov, kids. Try not to splatter too much when you finally leap off the cliff.

Article Author: John Scalzi

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