- Stereotypes are hard to shake. Once something gets into popular consciousness, the standard viewpoint is all that is seen, whereas what may be the more correct or appropriate truth is unable to be seen clearly. In Western culture the figure of “Lucifer” is taken to be the personification of evil – Satan, the Devil, Beelzebub – when all of those figures are actually different and have far more diverse beginnings and connections to the collective cultural belief system. As the name suggests, “Lucifer” is the “light bearer” which is an odd name for someone who is conflated with demonology, darkness and Hell.
Sydney electronic musician Marcus Whale leaps easily over the music industry’s dreaded “difficult second album” stereotype bringing into a very grim Australian COVID-19 afflicted winter an eleven track essay that confronts the misnomer and stereotyping of “Lucifer” and much else besides. Known for his work in the duo Collarbones and the band BV along with a well-received solo debut album Inland Sea (co-produced by HRTK’s Nigel Lee-Yang) Whale has poured much of the life and experiences he has lived into Lucifer and it is one of the most intelligent releases this year.
Whale spent some time in his early teenage years as a choirboy at Sydney’s grand temple to Roman Catholicism, S. Mary’s Cathedral, and while he has since moved away from the religious strictures expounded there, the impact of the theatrical blending of music, light, sound and ritual forms the core of the work here. Also deeply influencing the lyrics on tracks like Work Your Gaze, the achingly plaintive Still and the unabashed smack down of an opener Proud and Dirty are Whale’s queer sensibilities as a young gay man rejecting the heteronormative world’s directives, particularly its attitude to queer people of colour and of Asian descent like Whale.
These eleven tunes veer from somewhat lyrical on A Ghost and Bliss to the almost experimental electro-metal atonal offerings of Indivisible. Whale’s voice is beautifully worked in and around the sounds he has created for this album and it’s a testament to his development not only as a songwriter but as a producer that Lucifer doesn’t sound indulgent or impenetrable. Alongside the reclaiming of “Lucifer” as a light bearing angel with the beautiful visage who refused to conform to a nasty, capricious father-god figure and was thrown out of heaven for the temerity of questioning and standing against an unjust, unyielding controlling figure, is how that reclamation could benefit others. For many diverse in gender and sexuality people, this is a defining moment of liberation, being able to push aside boundaries that make no sense in being there in the first place. Also, Whale wants the listener to also move past the stereotypes they may have in the way they see people of colour from an Asian background and the way they have been fetishized unnecessarily by the straight and queer world alike.
The rich, anthemic treatment of these themes on Bliss Reprise or one of the album’s stand out tracks A Field of Mirrors, has Whale’s soaring voice shining as both a light and a clarion call for understanding and acceptance. No Bounds, which follows Proud and Dirty is unapologetic in its upfront challenge to the accepted understanding and stereotyping with a halting, insistent vocal delivery over a throbbing electro-industrial soundscape.
It would be fitting if this work were turned into an opera, or, better still, a combined concert, light/projection art installation and physical theatre performance. Lucifer works on many levels and as part of the release, Whale is pairing the album with a written work as its physical product, a zine containing lyrics, further texts and visual works. It also has a dialogue with collaborator Athena Thebus whose seemingly innocuous Tweet to Whale in 2016 about the true nature of “Lucifer” spurred him to spend the next few years creating this complex, layered sonic journey that is one of this year’s best releases.
- Blair Martin.