Song(s) of the Day # 3,536 Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter

 

One of the altogether oddest records you'll hear this year. This year or any other frankly. Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter's Saved! is forty six minutes of unrepentant, old school, babbling in tongues, capital lettered, fire and brimstone, black frocked preacher in a pulpit hell and damnation with crazed congregation behaviour you're ever likely to witness. Sorry about that sentence. But I had to at least try to do what's going on here some kind of justice.

This may or not float your particular boat but this is what you're going to get with this record. Be very clear of that. It's completely, feverishly unrelenting and off its trolley, and once it establishes its momentum, (and that is instantly)  it maintains it, come hell and highwater.

I listened to this yesterday morning, so you don't have to, and so frankly I don't have to again either. It's not the kind of record I immerse myself in generally. It's simply too mannered for words. Hey I love this stuff. Make no mistake. I read my fair share of Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Tennesse Williams,and Carson McCullers in my youth. But I was never particularly interested in Nick Cave's heroin addict meets preacher schtik in the Eighties, (I chose R.E.M., the Go Betweens and The Triffids instead because they had much better tunes), and I'm not going for this full throttle now either.

The artist behind this record is Kristin Hayter who formerly worked as Lingua Ignota, and she puts every inch of her considerable talent, know how, obsessive zeal and very being into Saved! . It's a quite remarkable record in many ways and many will clutch it obsessively to their chests and play it half to death. It certainly takes itself so seriously that on the first track here, it scratches and wobbles repeatedly like an old seventy eight distorting on the gramophone. This is quite deliberate dislocation of the listener's senses in the name of Dark Art. No stone is left unturned in its crazed pursuit of authenticity.

I'm not that way inclined frankly. Not to this degree. My mother always warned me to do everything in moderation and she was quite right. I have my Gun Club and Pixies records for when I want to dip my toes into this particular biblical gene pool. To take it to this degree is frankly a conceit and much as I enjoyed listening to the record in the early hours of the morning, I think I'll probably leave it there for the most part from now on. But many will just adore this and I commend it to them.