I’m not sure what triggered it exactly, but I’ve always had a great fascination with “scary” music. My earliest memory of listening this “genre” was stumbling across Múm’s album Summer Make Good by accident. I don’t know what I was looking for exactly (probably another, better album by the Icelandic band), but I was engrossed by the sounds I was hearing. Breathless vocals, creaking floorboards, haunting winds blowing in the distance, empty rooms swelling as people in the far distance yelled out; this was something entirely new to me, something full of such morose potential, something I very quickly began to adore. I realise that Summer Make Good is far from the definitive “scary album” but in retrospect, it was a good place to start; not overbearing and easily accessible (it’s just a shame there weren’t that many good songs). It set me on a tangent to find more of this kind of music – a tangent I’m still on to this very day.
My exploration brought me face to face with a generous sleuth of artists and albums to explore. I recall falling for Sigur Rós’ often forgotten debut album Von and its unsettling ten minute opening track, even playing it as loud as I could to freak out my family (they managed, as always, to ignore it, much like everything else I played). I remember buying the Robert Rich/B. Lustmord album Stalker just for its description on Amazon alone. Heck, I think the only reason I ever got into The Knife was because descriptions of the band’s brilliant album Silent Shout were littered with words like “creepy,” “menacing” and as something that would “scare the abject shit out of you.” And then I read about Scott Walker’s album The Drift. Listening to it changed the game for me, as it introduced me to music that wasn’t intentionally scary, but instead frightening as a consequence of the challenging and beguiling material it covered. And perhaps I got a little too obsessed with it (and listened to it more often than any human should) but I never thought anything would top the astounding experience listening to The Drift still brought me during those first few spins.
And then sometime earlier this year I read this very enticing and strangely vague review of the self-titled record from Giles Corey (aka Daniel Barrett). Descriptions of it being unsettling and even causing sleepless nights instantly pricked up my ears, but it seemed to be something much, much more than just another “scary” album to add to my library and to weird out my friends with. Behind the almost entirely black cover (almost black like the cover of The Drift, it might be said) and behind any mystery the author of the above article created was a heart-wrenching story.
Giles Corey isn’t an attempt to find solace; it’s an attempt to find some sort of answer or a kind of understanding. At some point during the spring of 2009, Daniel Barrett tried to kill himself. “…I found myself in the kitchen, a knife to my chest. Wailing, screaming, and crying” he recalls, almost confused and numbed by the experience. But the shadow that engulfed him more than ever at this moment lifted enough for him to throw the knife into the wall, where he left it for weeks. His life was spared but his destiny was set: “I had already decided that my life was not worth living, and so the depression manifested itself as a question: If I did not wish to be alive, did I wish to be dead?” This album has Barrett trying to find an answer to that question.
When you first properly engage with the material of that makes up Giles Corey (a nine-track album and a 150-page book), it’s severely personal subject matter can easily make you feel uncomfortable. This is very heady stuff but that’s not because of wildly ambiguous and diverse references but rather because of how deeply personal and – perhaps most importantly – how human it all feels. Barrett’s journey through his depression is explained in the book which helps shed light on the sounds you hear on the album, giving each other context; the book feels like the calmer and thorough version of the agitated and ferocious lyrical content in the music while the album acts as a sort of release for the unanswerable questions posed in the text.
It sounds tedious but I don’t want to go into the story too much. This is Barrett’s own fiercely personal recounting of the last few years of his life, of his desire to find answers to questions that put him on the edge. His story isn’t mine to tell; I can only relate to you how I experienced it. When I first received the album in the post I was intrigued, but I never made the immediate action of listening to the album and reading the book. I knew this was going to be challenging and weighty to stuff to engage with and my own personal turmoil made me put Giles Corey aside for months. It wasn’t until I found myself in my own spiraling depression that I decided to read the book, in an attempt to find something or someone to relate to. I was awake early one morning and went into my living room, took it off the shelf where it sat for so long, and read it. Within minutes and the first few pages I was in tears, which continued long after I finished reading it, as a strange fear crawled over every piece of my skin. As I said, I don’t want to go into the contents of the book but its words and its emotional pull seeped into my veins, turning my blood cold and raising every hair on my body.
Amidst all the other emotions, I was terrified. When I played the CD (which was weeks after first reading the book) I pressed play with trepidation. Before I started listening I had some idea as to what to expect, mainly due to the review I cited above. Not wanting to sound too cliché again, but no words or descriptions will really, properly, fully prepare you for the sheer heart-wrenching emotional pull that these tracks have. The music goes from honest and pessimistic acoustic ballads to full on orchestrated despair. Guitar strings tremble, piano keys reverberate into empty space, voices echo almost aimlessly at times. If I was trying to satisfy that curious “scary music” loving part of me, then I well and truly found the perfect thing.
But it’s when all the emotions, all the fury, all the… well, everything; it’s when everything swells up and unleashes a huge barrage of noise that the album really, and I mean really, hits you. The two most notable instances of this are on the opening track “The Haunting Presence” and the late-blooming centrepiece “No One Is Ever Going To Want Me.” On the former of those, Barrett goes from a whisper to a multitude of screams in what feels like a second, like he’s calling out to the spirits of the dead or just anybody who might hear him and be able to help him. My eyes well up every single time it happens. Though less (ahem) haunting, the effect on “No One Is Ever Going To Want Me” is just as moving and chilling, if not more. After letting the listener settle into a shuffling acoustic mid-section, Barrett once again lets rip with a noise that has the ability to knock you off your feet. In it, Barrett sings “I want to feel like I feel when I’m asleep” which, in itself, portrays the desire to want to rid oneself of living. It soon accumulates to Barrett repeating the phrase “I wanna feel” over and over, as if he’s lost the ability to, before screaming the word “sleep,” like he’s pleading to his insomniac mind to rest so he can escape the horror of the depression he feels when awake.
There are many other great moments though; I could mention “Spectral Bride” which sounds like a series of traditional gospel songs reworked, the affecting vocal hook of “Grave Filled With Books,” or the dizzying and demented brass of “Buried Above Ground.” But as much as I try to tell anyone about this or describe this album in words, I feel like I’m giving away the story while also doing it no justice whatsoever. Every word, every strum and every echo of loneliness and despair becomes even more loaded when they are given the context the book brings.
Yet, I know that I’m always going to falter when trying to get the significance, the effect and the importance of this album across to you or anyone else. Like all brilliant records, Giles Corey needs to be heard to be understood. Some might accuse me of being terribly and frustratingly banal in the way I place this “mysterious” album on a pedestal, not really saying anything in particular about it but only how it affected me. And if so, I’ll occupy that clichéd space, if only to uphold how special I think Giles Corey is. And, I concede that this work may not be for everyone. For some it will simply be too much, while it may well hit too close to home for others who may have found themselves in a similar position to Barrett. And to others, the whole experience might just be too scary. In all honesty, I’m as pathetic as it comes and won’t even play the album when the sun goes down, nor read the book while the music is playing. In fact I haven’t even read the book in its entirety since that first time; the thought of it is just too much for me. But the music I love, and it will stay will me forever. But it’s not haunting me, it feels like it part of my own emotional state. Much like that above review by Kyle Phelps points out, Barrett’s suicide note becomes your own. If that is to be my fate, then I would be more than happy to have one as terrifyingly beautiful as this.
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