Feasting With Panthers

 
Last year I ran a short series of weekly posts where regular reader Spencer sent me a song and I wrote about it. It went really well, all the songs/ tracks were right up my street but none had been posted here before. They were in the main long, intense, gnarly, electronic dance music- Model 500's ground-breaking Detroit techno, a DFA remix of Jon Spencer and his Blues Explosion, I-f's 90s electro classic Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass, La Funk Mob's supercharged Gallic breakbeat, Factory Floor's 21st century acid house. 

Spencer sent me this a couple of weeks ago, a song in a very different vein to the ones he sent me in the autumn and one completely new to me. This is The Moon's Lament by Cindy D'lequez Sage. I can't find an mp3 of the song so it's Youtube only I'm afraid. 

Lots of reverb, a guitar strummed faintly and the husky, somewhat opiated sounding voice of Cindy, expressing some dissatisfaction and setting out what she wants- 'feasting with panthers is alright for some/ But me I'm a planet and I still need some fun'. A wolf howls. A guitar solo rips its way in, valve amp pushed to the max. 'All my friends are mirrors and all my mirrors my friends/ In the olive grove so fair, failed eyes I whisper/ I don't want your food, I don't want your cups/ I just want some love'. Spooked and more than  a little haunting, there's a touch of Nico about the voice and the delivery, of The Bad Seeds about the tone and the music, and of Spacemen 3's bluesier moments. 

The song plays over the closing scene/ credits of a 2009 Peter Jackson film, The Lovely Bones (Spencer's seen it, I haven't yet), a murder/ supernatural thriller/ horror starring Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci. Both Ronan and Tucci were praised for their performances and I don't think I've ever seen a bad film with Saoirse Ronan in it.  

The film appears to have divided critics somewhat. Rotten Tomatoes says, "It's stuffed full of Peter Jackson's typically dazzling imagery, but The Lovely Bones suffers from abrupt shifts between horrific violence and cloying sentimentality". It was scored by Brian Eno. The soundtrack includes songs from Eno's own back catalogue, mainly the 70s including The Great Pretender, Baby's On Fire and The Big Ship, along with songs by Paul McCartney, Cocteau Twins, Van Morrison and Tim Buckley. 

There is very little on the internet about Cindy which is in itself odd- virtually no information, background or biography. She doesn't seem to have recorded anything else and the song isn't on the CD release or the soundtrack to download. Wikipedia says this about the film's closing credits- 'For the film's ending, Eno uncovered a demo he had done in 1973 and reunited with the vocalist to create a proper version for the film, commenting: "That song from 1973 was finally finished in 2008!" I'm assuming this is a reference to The Moon's Lament. Some Youtube commenters reckon that the song is Brian Eno with his voice pitch shifted. A couple think it's Van Morrison. Some chip in to say Cindy is real, is the songwriter and the singer. One commenter says that Cindy is real and is her mum. Another that Cindy died 'last year' (comment left a year ago, in 2022). I'm not sure Youtube comments are necessarily evidence that would stand up in court so the identity of Cindy remains unclear. It's all a bit of a mystery. If anyone knows, please write in to the usual address.