“Surgeon” opens with the line “I spent the summer on my back,” which we had been teased with throughout the Pitchfork Festival advertisements and the teaser videos building up to the release of the song. The majority of us took this as a description of Annie Clarke’s sexual promiscuity over one summer, but that’s not what she was talking about at all, and looking at her track record we really should have known better. Throughout her previous two albums Clarke has presented a slightly twisted outlook, and here she’s describing a summer that she’s spent bed-ridden either through a broken heart or actual injury – the interpretation is up to you.
Musically the song starts off with a motif which clearly recalls You Only Live Twice, which could play into the lyrical themes – she’s dying for one reason or another, and she needs surgery to give her a new lease of life. The song then starts lazily, soundtracking her days spent in bed doing nothing other than watching television. After a brief interlude of hazy woodwinds the song leaps into a more frantic mode; Clarke switches to a frustrated falsetto as she repeats “best find a surgeon, come cut me open,” and her guitar noodling seems more furious. The song ends on a breakdown of looped vocals, fuzzy bass synth and a siren-like wail, taking the song off in its third or fourth different direction in as many minutes, yet still all fitting together seamlessly.
The song uses many techniques and tools that it seemed Clarke had mastered for Actor. But, if “Surgeon” is anything to go by, Strange Mercy will show us that there are more previously unforeseen levels to what Clark describes as her “technicolor animatronic ride.”
