Ugh, the sampled children voices on All the Pretty Little Horses are terrible. Who wants to hear little kids yapping at them in real life? Who wants to hear that in their music?

Why does Nick Cave randomly show up near the end of the album? Completely takes you out of the album because David Tibet is the narrative’s storyteller. And you don’t just change that during the climax. Hurts the cohesion.

And David Tibet’s lyrics, or “poetry” as I guess most people refer to them as, are even more obtuse than usual and finding an overall album theme in them requires a lot of the listener’s imagination, and faith in the poet as well in that he’s actually trying to get something across instead of simply stringing some heavy words together that seem like they might have some greater depth to them when accompanied with the stock horror movie cliches of droning eerie music and “creepy” sampled children’s voices. Narratively this album tries to go for something unique but falls flat on its face with tropes, and musically it’s nothing special.

It’s all so contrived that I want almost want to set aside and my pride and use the damning P-word, but I refuse. Partly because there’s good to be found in Current 93, at least with Thunder Perfect Mind, and I don’t want to rule out the idea I could eventually find something more in All the Pretty Little Horses. But for now I very much doubt that happening and I won’t hold back when I say I find this album a lot funnier in its endless cliches than I do haunting. Also, 78 minutes long? Fuck! If I had a life and places to be, I would be pissed at Tibet for being so demanding of my time for this when the tone of the conversation remains the same for that entire 78 minutes.

Man I’m writing this now as I’m listening to the hidden (ugh) track, which is a “reading by Thomas Ligotti.” I definitely like this Thomas Ligotti’s poetry much more than Tibet’s, so points for that. But are there really stock “ghostly wails” going on in the background through this whole thing? Did he sample one of those Halloween noise maker CDs you can buy from Wal-Mart? This couldn’t even creep out that child on the album cover.

Turns out I’m still not done. It ends with a nursery rhyme (the one in the album title if you couldn’t guess). With some editing you could probably stick this in a commercial for a generic horror movie. And it’d be rated PG-13.