Irish author/musician Matt Hayward puts his impressive writing chops on display in his short story collection, Brain Dead Blues.
The lead story, “God Is In The Radio,” owes much to H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Music Of Eric Zahn,” only it’s more coherent and satisfying than the original. An aging rock star finds an inter-dimensional doorway hidden inside the notes of his latest tune.
Those little off notes in a Blues lick. The ones that make you think of sex and sin… Those blue notes and the tritone are where the secrets lie.
Music and melody drips from every page of Brain Dead Blues, and Hayward sets a colorful scene will a handful of well-chosen words.
The place smelled of sawdust and stale beer, but to him, it smelled like the raw stench of live music.
The intersection of melody and monsters is where Hayward shines brightest.
Something about the melody got under his skin, wriggled about like a maggot, infecting him. He vomited three times.
At times, Hayward uses his tales to portray the sad path modern music has taken.
Honestly, no one gives a shit! We’ve devalued music so damn much that people just expect you to bleed for free.
The real artists, the real musicians, they’re left working in coffee shops and garages across the globe for next to nothing…
A love of Lovecraft is evident in Haywards prose, from panicked, unreliable narrators, to creepy, cosmic creatures.
Other worlds. Worlds that would make you lose your mind even if you only gave them a glance.
Their faces did look eerily similar to an angler fish, lower lip eating the upper.
Hayward’s other literary strength is weaving fairy tales, folklore, and traditional horror tropes into something wholly original. “The Faery Tree” draws inspiration from “The Monkey’s Paw” while turning the “Tinkerbelle”-notion of fairies on its head. “Cordyceps” turns people into exploding seed spores, while “Critter” blends the best parts of ET and When Animals Attack! Even something as innocuous as a will-o’-the-wisp becomes a unearthly nightmare in Hayward’s hands (“An Angel And A Reaper”).
There are vampire and werewolf stories in Brain Dead Blues, but neither are what you’d expect. The vampire tale—“You Get What You Pay For”—is more of a rumination on eternal life and endless loss, while tipping its hat to the “creepy curio shop” trope. The werewolves in “King Of The Gypsies” belong to a kind of monstrous Fight Club that holds love and family sacred.
As an accomplished musician, there is a palpable rhythm and pacing to Brain Dead Blues. It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it…until one of Hayward’s strange creations pops up and scares the shit out of you.
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