Madra Salach release their latest single, ‘The Man Who Seeks Pleasure’, the self-coined focus track for the EP, ‘It’s a Hell of an Age’. A swooning and hypnotic alternative-folk ballad with its droning harmonium, delicate fingerpicking, and honestly spoken delivery. Gives the sensation that arises from a keening, harkening through and beyond time – a sound out of time, but that is situated perfectly for this moment.
The lyric from the song goes – “The Man Who Seeks Pleasure is the Man Who Seeks Pain” –and one can be left to think, what does this mean?
Although initially discerning through clinical practice and community observations that humans seek pleasure above all other desires, Freud later adjusted his position. Initially, Freud believed that the Id, otherwise known as the Unconscious, that instinctual, pre-thought part of consciousness, wanted to avoid pain at all costs and instead was driven towards an infantile need for pleasure. He later posits that there is something that lies beyond pleasure. He later moves or changes such a position in ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ (1920). This notion is captured in the lyricism of Madra Salach’s new single, that perhaps beyond pleasure there is not just, or simply not only, an ability to have either pleasure or pain, rather these two desires are captured eternally in a dialectical relation, constantly in-flux, as the movement of a murmuration does, diving and drifting against each other in a dance across planes – unifying polarities, humanity as co-constituted between these two elemental forces of desire. As Jeremy Bentham wrote, “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.” That essence of tension within Being is explored in the tension of the droning melody, which swoons throughout the songs, rising and setting, it harmonises the inability for words to fully express the sensations felt by that torment of knowing that the tension shall be ever-present; in that way it is a melodic representation of ourselves, at our collective core, beyond linguistic representation and verbal utterances. As these two forms of expression unite and collide, as they often do in songs, we come to grasp – in part – a truth which although was somewhere known, is now felt, we are given a song which is in harmony with our understanding.
Madra Salach inside Issue Fifty-Nine of So Young Magazine.
With those lyrics, “The Man Who Seeks Pleasure is the Man Who Seeks Pain” – the question arises, what do we do now?
Given the intervention into the psyche that becomes acknowledgeable through the confronting lyricism, one then has to face the ontological consequences of such a realisation. Yet, perhaps that question is beyond the scheme of this piece. Perhaps such a question belongs to the audience? Perhaps, such an imposition can only be accomplished by retention of feeling and its ensuing action by the admirer.
If you – the listener, the audience, the fan – are left with any doubt then continue attending shows, continue interpreting these wonderful songs and make a decision for yourself what comes next. For there will be new music by this group, there will be more songs, songs beyond critique and interpretation – the question therefore comes what do you do with it?
Photo by Robbie Stickland
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