Frances the Mute is definitely my favorite album of theirs. If you listen to it from beginning to end, it's sheer brilliance.
The generally accepted story is that Frances was raped by some member(s) of the church and forced to get rid of Cygnus, her son. Cygnus grows up and becomes a male prostitute, and get's AIDS or whatever. He is in search of his mom, and finds her in the Widow without realizing it. He ends having sex with her and gives her AIDS. His whole life he's believed she's some amazing person, yet when he finds her sister, Miranda, she tells him that Frances wasn't as holy as Cygnus thinks she is. In Cassandra, Cygnus goes out and finds the priests who did that to his mother, and kills them. I believe he ends up dying himself at the end.
It was written when one of their sound guys, who used to work as a repo man, found an orphan's diary in an abandoned car.
Having an idea of the story and trying to figure out what's going on makes the longer "noise" parts so much more listenable. They fill in a lot of the story, almost cinemaesque.
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