MURDER BALLAD 24 - GUN FURY ACT I “Fair is foul and foul is fair” chirp the witches in the introduction to Macbeth, an opening that invites the audience to dig below the surface of the story, because as the floor stickies in old Bill’s tale of betrayal and murder, we learn that all is not as it first seems.

Scout Niblett is an English singer, songwriter and musician. Her murder ballad “Gun” is a sinister song about a plan for vengeance wrought by a troubled mind. Scout is a stage name - Niblett named herself after the tomboy child in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”. In the novel, Scout is a feisty and outspoken child who expresses herself simply and directly with language unencumbered by the barriers of acculturation that shackle the adult world. Scout is stubborn. Her adolescent single-mindedness makes empathy a challenge for her. Still, she is the overlooked hero of the book, and the author hints that she has great potential, but, like America itself, she is still struggling, still forming.

In Scout Niblett’s song the narrator has been done wrong. Her lover has lied to her and is with another woman.

Now, accounts of break-ups and the accompanying grief and sadness are de rigueur in pop music. Roy Orbison’s break up left him “Crying’”. Smokey Robinson’s admits in “Tracks of my Tears” that his smile was “only there to fool the public” and in Billy Bragg’s version of “Walk Away Renee” when his love starts seeing “Mr. Potato Head” he tells us he “went home and thought about the two of them together until the bath water went cold around me”.

But of course, break up songs aren’t always about men sharing their vulnerability. When betrayal knocks on the door it is often answered by anger, and revenge. “Tell me why everything turned around” cries Lindsay Buckingham as he shares his confusion and anger about his failed relationship with Stevie Nicks in “Go Your Own Way”. And much to Stevie’s chagrin he lets her and the world know “packing up, shacking up’s all you want to do”. HIS revenge was to write a hit song about her commitment issues and get her to sing it with him every single night they go on stage. When they perform it live, the song seems to be a cathartic “cri de coeur” for Lindsay, while Stevie looks like she would rather crawl under a rock. But “Go your Own Way” shows signs of acceptance, or at least resignation amidst the ache and anger.

“I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW!” screams Kelis in “Caught Out There” - angrily adding “So sick of your games, I’ll set your truck to flames”. Nancy Sinatra’s revenge was letting her man know that her boots were made for walking when she finds out “You’ve been messin’ where you shouldn’t have been messin’”

Scout Niblett’s “Gun” also tells a tale of betrayal and revenge. But In “Gun” Scout Niblett lets us know she isn’t into screaming or walking, she’s into killing. The song opens with a vocal delivery of an unemotional and practical plan, while her guitar growls and seethes, like a revving motorcycle at a traffic light, or someone grinding their teeth.

“I think I’m gonna buy me a gun, A nice little silver one And in a crowd someday you won’t see it coming anyway”

Not only does she plan to kill him, it’s going to be an ambush.

And she goes on to share her withering scorn for the other woman:

“Maybe you’ll be holding her hand, Or watching her shitty band”

Scout has lost her love, and insists that she is “thankful everyday”. But as these lines are repeated obsessively they suggest rancour rather than acceptance. Denial, anger, and a desperate need for control - overwhelm any acceptance. Like Lady Macbeth in her determination to be Queen, Scout seems to be in a state of unhealthy fixation. Macbeth was never a story about one man’s hunger for power, it’s a murderous codependent love story.

You see, Macbeth was bullied into killing by his wife. She wanted to become Queen, and so the King was the first body that hit the floor. That’s murder, treason AND insurrection - and it’s 3 strikes you’re out at Macbeth’s ball game. The guilt over his actions cause him to lose his faculties. He starts hallucinating. Lady Macbeth has profound mental health issues soon after, but this is not out of any sense of guilt, as she is utterly without compassion. Her deterioration begins after Macbeth goes off to war and leaves her on her own. Without a King to manipulate and control, she festers with her own oppressive thoughts and begins to unravel. Haunted by a fantasy of blood stains on her hands she compulsively washes them. This is old Bill’s way of revealing an unconscious attempt to rid herself of her moral stains, of her own soul’s uncleanliness. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth pay the price for their crimes with their sanity. As the disco witches Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb once falsetto’ed “When you lose control and you’ve got no soul it’s tragedy”. Lady Macbeth is in denial and develops an unhealthy coping mechanism, an early example of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Poignantly, Donald Trump has an obsession with germs. Trump doesn’t really like shaking hands, especially those of teachers. According to Trump “teachers have 17,000 germs per square inch on their desks….ten times the germ rate of other professions” He is also said to avoid pressing the “G” button in elevators because it is the button he believes to be most infested with germs. The Donald has claimed that he is “borderline” OCD, and has said “I feel much better after I thoroughly wash my hands, which I do as much as possible.”

“and nobody, not even the rain has such small hands”

e.e.cummings

But of course, e.e. cummings poem is about love, and Donald Trump’s presidency has nothing to do with love.

ACT II

Scout has acknowledged the mixture of strength and vulnerability in Courtney Love’s songs were an influence on her work, and she has also claimed that it was after hearing Kurt Cobain that she decided to pick up a guitar. Scout however, tends to work solo and her sparse guitar playing reminds this listener not of Courtney or Nirvana but of the bluesmen of the Mississippi Delta. Her guitar sounds like Cobain’s, but her plain, stark guitar style is more like John Lee Hooker’s “Tupelo Blues”, or “Bring me my Shotgun” by the Texas bluesman Lightnin Hopkins.

Niblett has crafted a musical persona. She plays a character who is in touch with her darker emotions, but she doesn’t understand them or control them, her stormy emotions seem to control her. Scout plays songs that simmer with restless tension, where love and pain seem to be two sides of the same coin. Her oeuvre tends towards alienation, but she is not alienated from her emotions. Scout Niblett sings the blues…the blues of pain and heartache and wishful thinking, the blues of unanswered questions, the blues of wishing for a second chance, the blues of being rejected and discarded. Her stories tell of an unconsummated desire or, the object of desire removing itself. Her songs don’t describe abusive relationships, but they do hint at them. Her songs don’t carry the hope or the whimsical observations of a Joni Mitchell. She is more like a female Raymond Carver, a writer for whom all relationships eventually unravel into confusion, destruction and unspoken pain. But unlike much of Raymond Carver there is a tenderness in her stories, the pain and the tenderness of a broken heart. And Scout clings desperately to her bitterness, melancholy and broken heart like a security blanket, because after all, there is a masochistic “comfort” in repeated trauma. It may not be healthy, but it is familiar.

Now, despite being a strong independent woman with a flair for writing songs about difficult relationships and emotions, Scout Niblett doesn’t view herself as a feminist. She claims “I don’t really respond to gender issues. I respond more to human emotion…I’m more in touch with things that affect people on a humanistic level rather than a gender level.” Yep, that old chestnut “I’m a humanist not a feminist.” Even today the feminist movement still seems to frighten, threaten or put off a lot of people who would seem to be natural allies. Andrea Dworkin has said of this “many women, I think resist feminism because it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships.”

Nancy Sinatra, Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain have all declared that they are proud feminists. Kelis, however, like Scout, does not identify as a feminist. Kelis is willing to acknowledge the historical importance of feminism, and she links it to the civil rights movement, but she seems to believe that now America and the world is a big meritocracy and you don’t need these kinds of movements anymore because all you have to do is work hard and you will be rewarded. In Kelis’ world there are are no longer colour or gender barriers. Kelis believes that she is an example of this - she is a successful black woman and so it must be true. But it is also true that many rich and successful people feel this way. Benjamin Franklin and Donald Trump both wrote books on how to be successful, and they attribute their success to hard work and getting by on very little sleep. But both Benjamin and Donald and a great many others have a tendency to overlook the role that luck and money have played in their situations. This blindness to their own privilege is a form of denial, it seems to work as a defence or coping mechanism and is perhaps no less an issue of mental health than imagining blood stains on your hands.

ACT III

At last the video. The video for this track is a flip side to the song. Where the song achieves a mounting tension, the video is light hearted…Niblett dresses up as Snow White and goes to a fairground where she rides a ferris wheel, poses for pictures, and eats ice cream.

Snow White is an interesting choice for Scout. The story of Snow White begins with her pregnant mother, a seamstress who pricks her finger on a spinning wheel. The red blood, the snow outside her window, and her black spinning wheel become details in her wish to have a beautiful daughter, with skin white as snow, cheeks the colour of blood and hair as black as the ebony frame. She gets the wish at a high cost - she dies in child birth. Her husband the King then marries a wicked woman consumed by vanity, and murderously jealous of Snow White’s beauty. She tries to kill Snow White a number of times. Snow White has no mother. Her father is virtually absent from the story, and in any case he is useless at protecting her from her abusive, murderous step-mother. The other men in her life are all weak and inadequate as father surrogates. There is a hunter who leaves her abandoned in the forest. The 7 dwarves she meets allow her to live with them, but they are all flawed, to the extent that they are each named after their flaws. She becomes their subordinate and does their cooking and cleaning. They leave Snow White alone and unprotected despite repeated attempts on her life. Snow White is a victim of repeated trauma - she is hunted, neglected, abandoned and suffers several attempted murders. She is young and immature, unable to express emotion, or make good decisions to protect herself. The adults are absent or adversaries, she has no role models who would help her develop towards maturity. Beneath the simplicity of the story of Snow White is a character who lacks the support to grow emotionally, to individuate. She is saved purely by luck…a prince comes along and kisses her (without consent) while she is unconscious, which miraculously saves her from death. She sees him upon awakening, and falls in love without ever having spoken a word to him. This is not the basis for a healthy relationship. Snow White is NOT a feminist fairy tale.

The last shot of the video shows Scout Niblett discarding the empty ice cream cone in the dirt, as if she has chosen to abandon the sweet and good natured playfulness of childhood for the violent adult world of the town in the distance. For the first time we notice she has a purse. What's in the purse? Where is she going? Is she going to . . . ?

(In Macbeth, most of the murders happen offstage. Ol' Bill knew this added to the tension)

CURTAINS