Marcus Whale: The Hunger | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Last year, Marcus Whale was exploring the mythology of the fallen angel Lucifer on his acclaimed second album of the same name. This year his musical landscape is much darker, and if it is at all possible, a lot queerer than anything he has released previously. The Hunger features nine tracks of differing sonic textures, something that is a hallmark of Whale’s solo work. Whereas 2020’s Lucifer soared in and around the mythos of religion and its antithesis, here the central theme is death and the undead, blood and life, an aching longing and its desire to be fulfilled; yet the chances are it never will be.

The Hunger is inspired primarily by the 1983 film of the same name, starring Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon. It fuelled so many queer fantasies and was probably the first modern vampire story to break the heterosexual nexus which underpins the classic telling of the Dracula, Nosferatu and other similar tales. As a performer who doesn’t shy away from expressing his queerness either on stage or on record, embracing the vampire mythology of both Eastern and Western tradition is a natural fit for Whale and The Hunger is as beautiful and ephemeral as any modern depiction of vampirism.

The opening salvo from Whale is surprisingly tender, starting with his pitch perfect tenor voice as an acapella, keening, eager for their “master” to turn them from their familiar to undead in Cowboy Song. This first track is really just part one of two, as the second, Two Holes is the resolution of that longing expressed in the opener, which after starting so sparsely gradually builds with an electronic drone underneath and the irresistible crescendo launches into that second song (and second single off this album). Featuring a steady throb of a rhythm track impersonating a heartbeat and Whale’s multi-layered vocals, which raise the listener to such a heightened level that it threatens metaphorical hyperventilation with the repeated lyric “…suck this air out/until you suck this air out”.

That lyric then forms the basis of the third single released prior to the album, the mesmerising Impossible which just floats along with a keyboard and several layers of electronic music phrases behind. The character that Whale is playing on this album isn’t just some cheap device to hang an album’s theme on: you really believe he is this desperate human creature willing to do anything and everything for the master who holds ultimate power over them.

Portal ups the tempo with some frantic drum-and-bass matching the pleading the lyrics enunciate and then it drops into a trippy swirl on Perfume. Here Whale heightens the sensual interaction between human and undead, a seduction that the manufacturers and marketers in the perfume industry have traded on for centuries. Ironic then, the fact that vampires have no smell – animal or otherwise, nor leave any trace where they have been (save for those two puncture marks on their human victim), yet Whale artfully places those in conjunction, like a master poet playing with assonance or a Formalist composer in dissonance.

The title track is hauntingly beautiful, based mostly around an echoing piano, with similarly echoing voices emanating, as if from another room – or other dimension. In a recent interview with Jared Richards of JUNKEE Whale says, “So often the bodily experience of desire is something that happens inside yourself. All those sensual experiences are conjured by your own desire.” In The Hunger the desire expressed is almost overwhelming.

Ending the album are three love songs of differing attitudes, Familiar starts with staccato chords, loud and jagged, breaking the spell left by the previous track and Whale makes it very clear that the character he is playing is more than willing to join his master in “un-death” – “every cell in me opens wide” which neatly, and cleverly makes the connection between the physical transfer of blood that has to happen in vampiric transition and the handing over of a life force to achieve another existence. Raining Blood is to put it mildly, spooky, seeming to be a duet between master and familiar with the developing chord progressions drawing the listener in, being showered sonically with the “blood” of transference. Undead ends this passionate forty minutes of love and devotion on another plane of existence with another uptempo drum-and-bass piece set in a shimmering soundscape, yet another of Whale’s signature styles.

Marcus Whale’s work here is clearly in tune with the zeitgeist. Lucifer was one of the albums of 2020, it’s hard not to see The Hunger being the same in 2021.

- Blair Martin.
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