After a couple of recent instances where my teenaged affection for Therapy? wan’t strong enough to include tracks of theirs played by John Peel across the autumn/winter of 1992 on this blog, it comes as something of a relief to be able to embrace Perversonality like a newly met, long-lost friend. If that analogy sounds like an oxymoron, I should explain that I had never heard Perversonality before hearing it on this edition of John Peel’s Music but straightaway it reminded me of exactly why I liked Therapy? back in the day.
All the elements of classic Therapy? are there: strong opening guitar line, funky bass, drumming which feels like a character in its own right, Andy Cairns with another cosplaying serial killer style vocal, lyrical themes of emotional conflict Love you and I hate you in the same breath etc, only for a definitive verdict to be arrived at by the 2:10 mark and which heralds a rapidly building sense of anguish/mania; the aural equivalent of someone prepping themselves for a suicide attempt. This is followed by a burst of guitar which sounds like emergency room procedures desperately trying to bring the victim back to life, only to level off and guide the listener safely through to a sampled testimony from what sounds like a support group meeting for emotionally vulnerable people. Therapy?’s use of samples was always one of their most fascinatingly striking qualities because, as is the case here, it helped to ground their songs into some kind of relatable reality. The sample used here feels perfectly in sync with a track whose object of affection and disgust appears to be Cairns himself. People often got hurt, rejected and damaged within the narrative of Therapy?’s songs, and that damage was often turned inward.
It’s naughty of me to describe Cairns’s vocal style as cosplaying. Regardless of whether he sang from experience or as a persona, his voice was the sound of scars which were either inflicted on other people’s bodies or his own psyche. For a brief period, Therapy?’s music helped me to both land and absorb my own blows, trivial though they were. Perversonality is the first track of theirs that I’ve heard in a long time which reminds me of how valuable that was for me.
Video courtesy of Therapy?
All lyrics are copyright of their authors.
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