When I first heard this album, I naively commented that it sounded “a bit like the Pogues”. It doesn’t though. In fact, it doesn’t really sound like anything that came before it, and not much like anything that’s come along since. It’s a freak, an oddity, an outcast, a fuzzed-up, messed-up, horn-laden abortion of sea-shanty soundscapes, painful laments, and acoustic strumming that adds up to one of the most moving pieces of music – no – works of art, that you’ll ever encounter. It is also possibly the only album to be based around the life and death of Anne Frank.

If this concept puts you off, move on. You probably won’t appreciate its other quirks either. You won’t understand why the sound of Jeff Mangum’s voice cracking as he reaches for a crowning note is the most heart-breaking noise you’ll ever hear. You won’t shiver as you listen to lyrics both intimate and disturbing – in the dark, we will take off our clothes, and you’ll be placing fingers through the notches in my spine – or thrill at the imagery of darkened stadiums, two-headed boys, and the impressions that sleeping bodies leave in still-warm sheets.

ITAOTS thrives on its self-made outsider image. The pounding folk-tinged stomps that form the backdrop to most of the songs are as at odds with contemporary music as the words that come tumbling out over the top of them, words that record the condition of a fervent imagination in breakdown, as Mangum grapples with childhood demons alongside the horrors of a war he has only known in the diary of a young girl. As the lucid nightmare of ‘The King of Carrot Flowers Pt.1’ gives way to the mournful brass of its sequel, the listener is introduced to a world where they are challenged by both fervent howls (I love you Jesus Christ!) and harrowing whispers (semen stains the mountain tops…). The only reason we survive is because we know that somewhere, deep within the unearthly voice and timeless melodies, there is a raw beauty, that resonates with hope.

This record was Mangum’s last libation unto the world, before his retreat into silence. Perhaps the birthing of these songs was too traumatic too repeat. If you can bear witness to this glorious tragedy, you won’t regret it. I promise you; it doesn’t sound anything like the fucking Pogues.
Josh Farrington

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