Charli XCX and John Cale have released a video for gothic pop dirge belter ‘House’, written to appear on the soundtrack for Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming adaptation of Emily Brontē’s novel Wuthering Heights. On a social media post last week, Charli XCX spoke about how as a huge fan of The Velvet Underground, she was particularly inspired by Cale’s belief (expressed on Todd Haynes’ film about the band) that songs must be both ‘elegant and brutal’. “I got really stuck on that phrase,” she posted, “I wrote it down in my notes app and would pull it up from time to time and think about what he meant.” The phrase kept coming to mind as she worked on the Wuthering Heights soundtrack. “I decided to reach out to him to get his opinion on the songs that his phrase had so deeply inspired, but also to see whether he might want to collaborate,” she wrote. “We got connected, we spoke on the phone and wow… that voice, so elegant, so brutal. I sent him some songs and we started talking specifically about ‘House;. We spoke about the idea of a poem. He recorded something and sent it to me. Something that only John could do. And it was… well, it made me cry.”
‘House’ begins with with Cale’s two note violin and his voiceover suggesting a soul stuck between worlds before the track is swallowed by infernal goth noise lunges and a distorted Charli sing/screaming “I think I’m gonna die in this house”. It is quite magnificent and you can watch and listen below.
