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by Steve Albini, ex of Big Black. The words have a
power because they’re both rhetorical and immediate;
the lack of a question mark above makes that clear.
The fourth track is perhaps the most remarkable. It
has the never-to-be-forgotten title ‘You have cum in
the your hair and your dick is hanging out’. Indeed.
The excessiveness of the title is in clear contrast to the
song’s extreme desolateness. On first listen, it is a delicate
broken-hearted love song (it reminds me of Philip
Larkin’s late poem ‘Love Again’). The drum-machine
adds a beat every three seconds, confirming the atmosphere.
Here’s it is in full (and the words haven’t been
mis-typed either):
Head start on the frog
on the deer and the dog
the things we true were taught
loyal torn from our hearts;
it’s now so soft underfoot
we sleep more than we sleep
if god could make me cry
I’d run along the water
she won’t come; I’ll be gone
she won’t come; I’ll be gone
play with it while you have hands
a desperate lack of demands
I can’t offer a thing
better than dying, so take it!
BUY Will Oldham music online from and
scrap the outfit
and hand me the keys to your car
if I leave before it is light
I’ll be around when you are
she won’t come; I’ll be gone
she won’t come; I’ll be gone
It is perhaps bad form to wonder for too long about
what it all means. Like all songs, a lot has to do with
how it’s sung and against what music. But what is clear
is the presence of the stillness of midnight; as if you’re
listening to the desperate words of a troubled, not to
say sticky insomniac. This leads many admirers to talk
about Oldham’s empathetic imagination. One writes
“you’re not just listening to words and a guitar, you’re
experiencing [his] honest feelings.” Yet ‘honesty’
doesn’t seem right. It’s not “this is the real me” honesty
of the cringeworthy ‘confessional’ singer-songwriter.
The words from “You have cum…” maybe deeply
felt but they are also impersonal. There are three “we”s
before a “me” appears. Is this the tyrannical darkness of
the collective unconscious pressing on the existential
loneliness of the one with cum in his hair? Probably.
Cum is, after all, where the male is exposed to evolutionary
time. It’s where the animal emerges, subject to
special history. Despite this, we know we have “a headstart
on the frog”. Our head gives us a start. The song’s
desolateness, therefore, is not about the sufferings of
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