The Minus 5, Killingsworth
Featured Album
The latest deranged feat of curatorial outrageousness from Scott McCaughey
On "Ambulance Dancehall," singer and songwriter Scott McCaughey finally goes too far. It's odd enough that the song opens as a fiddle-and-guitar country shuffle borrowed from Texas legend Doug Sahm via early-'90s alt-rockers Uncle Tupelo, then slides into a surreal tale about a Civil War-era hospital turned nightclub where the featured entertainment is a band called Florence and the Nightingales, and which a cult of "Christians and killers" sets ablaze. What's really deranged is when the song turns into a spoof of '60s dance-craze hits. "Ambulance dancehall/Do the Gangrene, do the Break," McCaughey sings. "Ambulance dancehall/ Do the amputated leg." Killingsworth, McCaughey's latest feat of curatorial outrageousness, pairs the neo-traditionalism of the Decemberists with some of the most profoundly unhinged lyrics this side of '60s psychedelia. "The Lurking Barrister" describes the damaging exploits of a corrupt Melvillian lawyer against plucked banjo and slapped cymbals; "Dark Hand of Contagion" encrypts a story of romantic jealousy into a peaceful, easy, Eagles-style ballad. McCaughey possesses the capacity to be direct: "Big Beat Up Moon" captures a woman adrift in a modern condominium wasteland, marveling at the sheer volume of loneliness that surrounds her. "How can there be so many people stacked up in rows/That still feel all alone?" she wonders. It's a brief respite of sentimentality before McCaughey plunges back into the luscious insanity.
