Greatest Album of All Time of the Week: Medusa!

Theme: Challenge - A.R. Kane

M O O D

Having been on my goth bullshit lately, you'll permit me to wax fanboy on my favourite 4AD art-goth record outside the hallowed discography of This Mortal Coil: Clan of Xymox's atmospheric odyssey Medusa. While Bauhaus took malevolent glee in the the act of post-punk rampage and the Sisters of Mercy brought majestic grandiosity to would-be stadium anthems (they weren't above having Jim Steinman pen their monster hits), it's the bummed-out voice of Ronny Moorings that's largely defined the tonal footprint of the dark scene in the wider culture, as evidenced by the fact his brand of languid, self-searching intonations better matches the loving pastiche of Peter Steele in Type O Negative.

But Clan of Xymox were scarcely a rock band at all; their goth was always of the trippy, dancey darkwave variety, and never more dramatic or more dreamlike than when it dripped with 4AD's trademark production shimmer. Medusa was so definitive a document of this ineffably cool style that it's no wonder they switched up genres altogether afterward, taking a multi-album detour into synthpop as just Xymox. Sure, the purist might well call it sElLiNg OuT, but at the very least Twist of Shadows is really good synthpop, and tracks like "In a City" still maintain much of the fatalistic melancholy that's as core to the project as snarling aggression is to Megadeth or wide-eyed exultation is to Catherine Wheel. I hope ol' Ronny isn't as perpetually bummed as he invariably sounds, and if he isn't I can but salute his four-plus-decades-long commitment to the bit.

Much as I love a good playlist, I remain a firm proponent of the album format and the integrality of proper sequencing, and Medusa is as flawlessly sequenced as the Mortal Coil records, ebbing and flowing from one morose shade of black to another with such effortless mastery of macro-dynamics that each track, verse or sonic interjection seems a narrative twist and/or turn, where lesser acts with less sophisticated production would blur into a sludge. Like TMC, they make liberal use of instrumental tracks to segue between arias. The heightened angst of "Agonised by Love" recedes like a tide into the sullen, sombre, yet serene "Masquerade", and there's a strident, cathartic climax in "After the Call"* before the anguished closer "Backdoor" drags us back down the sonic labyrinth, with its plaintive lament, "Tomorrow I will be here again/Tomorrow I will be here again/Be here again". By the number of spins I've given this immortal disc, this panicked prophecy was every bit as much a promise. Listen to Medusa (in the dark, alone).

*Pieter Nooten did another version on his solo album which is also worth a listen; less bombastic march, more calm reflective prayer. They're both so good I can't pick one over the other.