Premiere: Jim Allen celebrates life with delightfully macabre ‘Wedding of the Dead’ lyric video

Necrogamy is the act of posthumous marriage. As disturbing as it might seem on the surface, it is a ritual that works to alleviate emotional turmoil and to perhaps bring a bit of peace for those who have undergone unimaginable tragedy. The practice is currently only legal on France and dates back to 1959 when French Parliament enacted a new law as part of their civil code. There’s a tragic, profound beauty in such a motion, and while it might remain culturally unconventional, there is a romantic undercurrent to it all. Scruffy New York City Americana troubadour Jim Allen calls to a similar ceremony with his new music video for his aptly-titled track “Wedding of the Dead,” premiering today.

“There goes the bride all calcified / At least she’ll fit into her dress,” he sings, decorating the ritual with a bit of icy dark humor. “Above her veils, a buzzard sails / Making an educated guess / Even the priest looks like a beast / That has been very freshly bled / Come grab a seat, they’re full of meat at the wedding of the dead…” Allen’s lyrics unravel as an irresistibly twisted but enticing Edgar Allen Poe poem, swollen with dusty truths of the end of humanity’s existence; meanwhile, Allen delivers each stanza with a nearly spoken-word intonation, permitting the words to stab the heart. “All of the guests are unimpressed / They’ve seen their share of casualties,” he later surmises. The visual, compiled of public domain footage by long-time friend Richard Brukner, heightens the vibrant absurdity of the song with great respect for the dead.

Allen, who last released a solo record 16 years ago (2003’s Wild Card), circles back the inspiration of such a peculiar story song. “The germ of the idea for the song came from a news story I read once. There was some isolated culture in some far flung place where a young couple who were set to be married had gotten killed somehow, and their community held a posthumous wedding for them. Just morbid enough to get my creative juices flowing, and it took off from there,” he writes to B-Sides & Badlands over email. “A long time later, when I’d recorded it for my album and decided to make it the first so-called single, my friend Richard told me I should make a video for it. I said, ‘That’s a great idea, but I have no clue how to make a video.'”

Bukner took the creative reigns from there, uncovering footage to serve as the celebratory, yet chilling, backdrop of the music. The video features “silent film of a wedding in Brittany in 1909 and a wedding in Faversham, England in 1913,” says Allen, whose obvious stylistic influences include Steve Earle and Tom Waits. “I feel like he edited everything perfectly to coincide with the flow of the song and accentuate the drollery of the lyrics.”

Allen’s brand new album, Where the Sunshine Bit You, is out via BandCamp now.

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Photo Credit: Helena Boskovic

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