Diamanda Galás
Guilty, Guilty, Guilty
Mute
She put a spell on us
Whether she’s howling her disturbing solo arias, or completely deconstructing traditional blues songs, or collaborating with a former member of Led Zeppelin, when Diamanda Galás lets those massive, multi-octave vocal notes soar, it is simultaneously riveting, cathartic and terrifying. You want confrontational? How about recording her masterful, Catholic Church-condemning Plague Mass live in a cathedral, stripped to the waist and covered in what looks like blood? You want soulful? She’s able to transform Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” into a funereal dirge devastating enough to blow the pancake makeup clean off a goth kid’s pimply mug. The inimitable Galás is a towering presence, on record and especially onstage, her command of her art undeniable.
Recorded live, as the majority of her albums have been over the last dozen years, and following a similar theme that dominated 2003’s La Serpenta Canta, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty focuses on classic songs about love, death and murder, and not only is it as spellbinding as we’d expect, but it’s her best effort in years. More streamlined in its approach compared to the sprawling Serpenta, her choice of material is as eclectic as we’d expect. She hammers mercilessly on her piano keys on O.V. Wright’s soul classic “Eight Men and Four Women,” turns Ralph Stanley’s “O Death” into a doom-ridden epic (her shattering screams sounding like John Cale sawing away on viola) and most brilliantly, makes “Heaven Have Mercy” sound even more tragic than Edith Piaf’s original, a forlorn air raid siren underscoring the husky, emotionally shattering chorus. —Adrien Begrand
