The Afghan Whigs with Marcy Mays, “My Curse”
Hurt me, baby.
I flinch so when you do.
Your kisses scourge me.
Hyssop in your perfume.Oh, I do not fear you.
And “slave” I only use
As a word to describe
The special way I feel for you.For today’s themesong of “angels and devils,” because it’s a song so much about Greg Dulli’s Catholic guilt/sex/love/complex that he couldn’t even bear to sing it on record — there is something divine and hellish there. Dulli couldn’t front his indie rock lothario act with this one, so he asked Scrawl’s Marcy Mays to sing it for him. Dulli would sing it live at times, but all those performances sound wrong. Asking a woman to sing it lent these self-loathing and domineering, ugly feelings beauty.
I have to disagree on one point—the version he sings for the Peel session is gorgeous and horrid and mindblowing all at once, and I never liked the Marcy Mays version as much after that, though I do think it’s a fine fine performance. Susan Marshall, who has a great voice, used to sing it live at a lot of shows, but her voice is wrong for it, in my opinion. She has this huge operatic voice and it overwhelms the song.
