A selection of favourite unsettling songs says as much about the person choosing as it does about the music. In fact, I've probably exposed my own psyche simply by using the word "favourite". Fortunately, I only listen to such music for research purposes, so that's all OK.
It was a fascinating week on the blog, with a broad range of nominations and plenty of articulate justifications. The final 10 is split roughly between unsettling music and unsettling lyrics in the hope that, whatever you prefer, everyone can feel a shiver go through them.
Scott Walker's Clara, from his 2006 album The Drift, has a boot in both camps. The lyrics describe the death of Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, but they do so in fragments that shift back and forth in time, switching between quiet repose in Il Duce's palace and the prodding of a corpse, presumably Clara's. All this is backed by a wail of strings that simulates a ringing head on the verge of black-out and, finally, a lone horn that barks as if at a pagan funeral. In the background is the sound of a man punching a slab of meat.
Medieval sounds often seem to unsettle the modern ear. Perhaps it's the influence of films such as The Wicker Man or The Seventh Seal, or the hint of a more chaotic, less sanitised world. Two other tracks employ similar effects: in Fever Ray's If I Had a Heart, synthesised chords are made to sound like the drone of a bagpipe, while Karin Dreijer Andersson's voice is modulated so that the lyrics are as much chanted as sung. In Aphex Twin's Gwely Mernans, a basic rhythm is bashed out on the tom-tom, accompanied again by single, repeated woodwind notes. The abiding feeling is one of an evil approaching.
Compared with such looming menace, the aural terrorism of Throbbing Gristle can seem almost consoling. Almost. We Hate You is still two and a half minutes of children screaming, after all. Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz forged a new genre, meanwhile, but one that can still sound like music made on another planet.
Into the second, lyrical half of the list. First up the original unsettler, Mack the Knife, its fairground melody belying the tale of a charming murderer on the loose (Brecht's rendition of his own lyric gets the nod for the menacing way he rolls his Rs). The Kids – a chapter taken from Lou Reed's Berlin – summarises the descent of his anti-heroine Caroline to the point where her children are taken from her: "They said she was not a good mother." Randy Newman's entry is, to my mind, the most unsettling song on the list, precisely because the lyrics allow you to pour your own meaning into them. How do you interpret "I was looking at the river/ but thinking of the sea"?
Our final two songs are by Richard Thompson and Syd Barrett. Thompson's narrator is an abused child, calmly turning abuser – "I once had a sweetheart/ Caught her running around/ I hit her with a log chain/ And I put her in the ground." Syd Barrett's last song with Pink Floyd is disjointed and odd, but made poignant if you believe it autobiographical. "I'm much obliged to you for making it clear. That I'm not here," he sings, dully.
