Oink, oink, let’s wiggle our curly tails in a joyful canine-porcine reflex: Pig is back with a new album. Hurt People Hurt arrives almost exactly two years after its predecessor Red Room, although in the meantime we’ve been treated to the EP Feast of Agony and the The Merciful Night remixes. Everything is good with Raymond Watts, whose frenetic creativity seems inexhaustible since his decade-long hiatus, and so it is with pleasure that we plunge back into his temple-pigsty made of machines and grandiloquent gospel.
Tosca’s Kiss grabs us straight away, dragging us into the mud the lardist. With a piano, some seriously heavy riffs, and vocals as expressive as ever (a crooner who’s half grotesque, half seductive, whispering, squeaking, growling and moaning with the enthusiasm of a piglet), Pig remains one of a kind. Accompanied by Jim Davies (ex-The Prodigy and Pitchshifter), Watts draws on his love of opera for inspiration, lending his experiments at the intersection of rock and electronica a dramatic intensity that is both offbeat and wildly elegant. Here, he makes explicit reference to Puccini as well as to Daniel Schmid’s film Tosca’s Kiss, a documentary about the first retirement home for opera singers in Milan founded by Verdi... fear not, however, Watts is in no hurry to retire to Milan.
Like a mad scientist in a constant state of turmoil, he continues to explore, to try to twist, to play, to break. By turns unsettling and mischievous, he evokes the figure of a trickster with something of a guru. As is often the case with Pig, everything takes on a religious tone with numerous backing vocals and that irresistible, infectious gospel touch. Take the title track, for example: he mumbles like JG Thirlwell and displays his typical ambiguity, at once ironic and slightly unsettling. What is he trying to tell us with this track? Does hurting people cause suffering, or, on the contrary, is he ordering us to go and cause harm? Indecision, suffering, sinister shadows transformed into flamboyant mutant anthems... we’re having a blast. Are we here to lose ourselves or to find ourselves in the face of the master of ceremonies’ sermons? Probably a bit of both as we're receiving our extreme oinktion.
In 2016, Pig released The Gospel after a ten-year hiatus, an album that would prove pivotal for the decade that followed. Hurt People Hurt follows in the same vein as everything Watts has done since: the work is characterised by a joy in tinkering, a joy that is infectious thanks to his sense of groove and an effortless coolness that permeates every moment. Quid Pro Quo, the choruses of DNA, and the more subdued, melancholic atmosphere of The Reaper’s Lament—which explodes with the arrival of the backing vocals—are all illustrations of this generosity and youthful vigour.
At times, Pig seems to be in a darker mood. At other times, he seems to be in a lighter mood. More blasphemous, more sacred. Elusive, much like the track Sex & Suicide, the hypnotic electronics of Scars with its noise-driven deviations, or the twilight-tinged Ruins, darkness blends with religious ecstasy, introspection and ruminations are elevated by climactic choruses, and each track takes on an epic, cinematic tone. Hurt People Hurt is another tour de force from Watts, just like him: exhilarating, bizarre, amusing, frightening, full of energy, grandiose and with such jubilant insolence!
