The Comedy of Errors: The God Machine - Pictures of a Bleeding Boy [Peel Session] (29 May 1992)

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Well there I was, a few days ago, talking about Sun Carriage following the yellow-brick road from Plymouth to London, and yet one post later we come to The God Machine, who make that journey look like a stroll to the corner shop.
Formed as a quartet in San Diego, during the mid-80s and calling themselves Society Line; only to re-locate as a trio to New York and rename themselves The God Machine, by the early 90s Robin Proper-Sheppard (guitar/vocals), Jimmy Fernandez (bass) and Ron Austin (drums) had swapped the US for London after meeting someone in New York who promised to record them and put out their music  if they re-located to London.  It appears that this was a vague promise given that when the band got to London, they realised they didn’t have any means of contacting their would-be benefactor.  With money low, they threw themselves into the London squat scene and passed their time with writing and rehearsing between off-the-books work.  In 1991, they released a single on Eve Recordings called Purity and which sparked enough interest for them to be signed to Fiction Records, best known as home to The Cure.  At the time which they recorded this Peel Session, the band were promoting their EP, The Desert Song, the contents of which make up three-quarters of this session, except for the third track which is a cover of a Bauhaus song called Double Dare (and any Bauhaus fans who may be looking in on this blog should sit tight for an appearance from them on this Peel show which I will be covering in the next couple of posts).

The video captures the full session that The God Machine recorded for Peel including his links where he gently sends up the portentous nature of their press release (“No verb in that sentence”) and it’s a strange thing because, for me, I can hear good things in each track especially the funk-industrial groove of second track, The Desert Song, but the only track I find myself wholeheartedly embracing is the final one, Pictures of a Bleeding Boy (starts at 19:28), mainly because it’s the only one where the music seems to be given space to breathe and touches such as Ron Austin’s cymbal washes seem to fit perfectly with the environment that the band are creating.  When carried out in earlier tracks like session opener, Commitment, it feels bludgeoning.  I’m aware though that the faults are probably more in my listening or emotional response.  I always feel that way when I hear pieces of music which clearly have much to recommend them but which I cannot seem to engage with.  In a fantastic  article aboutThe God Machine’s 1993 debut album, Scenes From the Second Storey, Ned Raggett talks about how utterly serious and intense Robin Proper-Sheppard was both within the songs he sang  and when talking about them. Raggett was seduced by that intensity, conceding that The God Machine will not work for a listener if they are not granted your permission to be that intense. Too often, I find myself withholding that consent, but blaming myself for it.

But on Pictures of a Bleeding Boy, all equivocation or doubt falls away.  Lyrically, the track goes to dark places with its allusions to self-harm and depression.

“What if I was to cut my wrists and paint pictures on the wall?
Could you see?/Could you see?
What if I was to cut my wrists and paint pictures on the wall?
A damaged sunset over a blood red sea.”

It fuses gothic rock with grunge and the spirit of Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross. But there’s none of the ethereal peace on offer here that Peter Green and friends produced.  Instead there’s only a wish to eradicate the self through the harming, but no clue of why it has to be this way.  The intensity is still there but in the quieter setting, I find myself more readily able to empathise than I did in the louder, industrial settings of the earlier songs in the session.

Video courtesy of Vibracobra23
Lyrics copyright of Robin Proper-Sheppard