The closing track on the Eva Luna album, Mugshot Heroine is one of "his" (David Callahan - albeit credited as a co-write with drummer, Miguel Moreland) so accordingly it is abrasive, threatening, loud and lyrically rather tortured. What makes it so compelling is the twin attack of the ominous, Eastern sounding string part, which anchors the track throughout, with the noirish blasts of brass which flare up intermittently along the way. Aurally, it blends the souk with downtown New York City in the 1940s. Whatever else happens from here, we're in a dangerous and unfriendly environment with only Moonshake to guide us.
I didn’t move away from my hometown of Falmouth until I was 32 years old. Since that time, I’ve lived in Ireland and London. My work took me, at times, into the city during periods when it was heaving with people at both day and night. I walked through deprived areas at night-time; places which before I knew any better, were associated in my mind with danger, crime and vice. I think because I reached an advanced age before doing any of this, the benefits of age and experience caused me to approach city/urban life with less anxiety than may have been the case had I moved to those areas at a younger age. I think if I’d heard Mugshot Heroine at the age of 16, I would probably have never left my bedroom, let alone Cornwall given the nihilistic vision of the city which Callahan and Moonshake present here. New arrivals are doomed virtually on arrival as they step out into an environment that cares nothing for their safety or even recognises their presence. The indifference is so absolute, that even the murder which awaits you if you stay too long will barely register with anyone, they’ll be far too busy drinking wine out of the gutter to notice. The only person it will register with will be the killer themselves, who once they read of a name being put to a victim, will only perpetuate their feelings of self-disgust; feelings which presumably can only be alleviated by killing again.
Callahan’s sneering vocal is devoid of any compassion for those who find themselves swallowed up, damaged, killed and forgotten in this environment. The track feels like a summation of an anti-urban feeling which informed at least one other track which he wrote for the album, City Poison, though that inverted things slightly by being critical of a city dweller moving out to another environment and bringing their perceived selfishness and entitlement with them, thereby ruining Callahan’s idyll.
In their enduring quest for innovation, when Moonshake recorded a Peel Session for broadcast at the end of January 1993, they shook things up by having Callahan and Margaret Fiedler sing lead vocals on a track originally written and sung by the other one: Ironic gender-swapping to keep us all entertained as Peel’s notes for the session put it. Alas, while Callahan did a terrific job on Fiedler’s song, Sweetheart, Fiedler was rendered virtually inaudible on the session version of Mugshot Heroine. A quiet, breathy vocal behind a cacophony worked wonderfully well on many of her contributions to Moonshake’s work, and possibly the band thought that given the track’s tonal debt to Venus in Furs by The Velvet Underground that it would have been perfect for Fiedler to provide a touch of Nico-like iciness to the performance. But she wasn’t up to it, and someone should have reminded the group that Venus in Furs was sung by Lou Reed and gone with the original vocal. Nevertheless, Peel appreciated their willingness to use the session to try something innovative.
Video courtesy of Moonshake - Topic
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