If you’re going to do fake blues, you’ve got to make it evil. That’s the rule. It’s a place for the weird and pseudo-weird. The place where creeps and mediums eye each other up. So, quite rightly, Locks‘ ‘Skeletons’ isn’t some ropey master key gag. We’re talking bare bones. But is it a vignette, or a worn out guilt metaphor? “I’ve got to get this off my chest,” she sings, but as her need to confess becomes more urgent, her words are lost. Perhaps what weighed so heavily on her conscience is really nothing. But as her hushed internal monologue becomes too much to bear, what spills out reveals distress but obscures details. Are there bodies? Where are they buried? “More fool you.” I don’t necessarily have a problem with the mediums, so long as you can’t see them pull the string to tip the water glass over.
It’s practically obligatory to compare any woman with a guitar to PJ Harvey, but Locks’ sinister whisper at the beginning reminds me of ‘Rid Of Me’ at least us much as the loping riff it’s buried under recalls Pink Floyd‘s ‘Money’. Not only that, but I picture a woman walking bowed against the wind to a moonlit chapel on the coast, soil staining her hands.
I’m still working out what this music gives me. Another key to that chapel? For those of you who haven’t been there, it has no door. Maybe, then, ‘Skeletons’ is a well-thumbed paperback, lying horizontal over the others on the shelves at the top of the stairs: an index to the strange part of the brain where fantasy meets memory. But that’s too general. This is about something Locks buried. I keep coming back to the song enough to hope it’s nothing as trite as skeletons in a closet, but actual remains in a shallow chalk pit. Maybe not fresh, maybe not wise, but worth some respect. But truthfully, it’s those gaps in the story, the stark brevity of the song, that keep me replaying the evidence.
‘Skeletons’ is a free download, available now from SoundCloud
