Because this song? By this band? Amazing. Pure pop horror. Sweet dark fantasy. Neo-burlesque, or goth vaudeville. With its deep crunching guitars and percussion like a telltale heart. With twinkling pianos straight from Dark's Carnival. A melody borne from a grand guignol jukebox.
And the lead singer? Cassandra Ford? Her voice. People who namecheck Gwen Stefani get it wrong. While Stefani's busy sampling The Sound of Music (badly) and chewing on plastic tacky bubblegum from the undersides of kindergarten desks, Ford has serious pipes with actual soul.
And those lyrics. They have teeth, and they leave marks. They're about being damaged and not necessarily ever getting well again. Flirting with the scary fringes of sanity and reality. A Poe or Lovecraft nightmare told with more conviction, as if Cassandra and the band knows the world and has seen in the twilight how it truly looks and works.
I submit the proper (click to hear) music & lyrics to "Surgery" by The Vincent Black Shadow:
Coming back from surgery,
Coming up on seventeen,
Some kind of heart-plasty or maybe a lobotomy.
Coming back from surgery,
Coming up on seventeen,
I don't remember how I looked before he got to me.
Coming up on twenty-three
Cut a piece of skin off me,
Never have to wait in line; they never seem to know it's me.
And he's standing over me,
Wide awake and clenching teeth,
"Now it's time," he says "for you to open up so I can see."
Caked... all...
Caked all over...
Article comments
1 - Tiffany Leigh
Thankfully, I got 99% of the words right, but for that last 1% I needed an assist:
"Hi Tiffany,
Thanks for the kind words about us in your blog. You were very close with the lyrics, the only error is that it's not heart-plasty, it's 'oplasty ("some kind of 'oplasty").
It is very nice to hear our music and lyrics have touched you in such a deep way, and we hope to translate it live in NYC!
-The Vincent Black Shadow"
2 - Dacia
thank god....i also ran into Megs annoying album details, i knew that part already..and seeing that you had the right lyrics, really made my day...Ive become obsessed with this album, playing it all 24/7 and surgery was the only one that i couldnt quite grasp..but now with your help i can! Thank you!
-Dacia
3 - Cassie
I just bought the album a week ago and i absolutly love it. The Vincent Black Shadow is my favorite band right now, and i'm sure they will be for a while. :D
4 - Panther
One other slight error ... it's "cut a piece of skin FOR me" ... at least in the version I have....
5 - Austyn
Oh my god. Thank you so much! I can't even tell you. I've been looking up the lyrics like crazy but I was never able to figure out the word "oplasty." I was pretty sure it was a type of surgery, considering it was used in the same sentence as lobotomy, so I went to dictionary.com typing in random words that sounded like what she was saying, hoping that something would come up. I also tried googling "types of surgery," though that failed miserably. THEN I FOUND THIS. Thank you a million times.