It never fails. That part in a film or tv show where a character realizes that, after surviving a whole adventure and completing a narrative arch, they are suddenly confronted with the reality that they never left the room where their journey had started. The conclusion: the entire story up to that point had been a dream, an illusion, a demiurgic ploy. I love stories with this kind of twist. It's a fascinating narrative tool as it focuses our attention on the truth that there is some central element of the character's conflict that they have not only failed to resolve but have not even been able to recognize. Listening to Canadian post-punk duo Delilah's LP Fault Lines has a circular, terrifying logic to it that matches the structure of a story that is also a self-assembled prison. Its repetitions, its ghostly schemas of hollow chamber resonances, the wistfully mechanical and treadmill-like quality of the beats; they all manifest an essential betrayal of the senses, conveying an impression that you are always running, even if you are never getting anywhere. Passages stretch on for miles, through twists and inversions, highs and deep, deep lows, and in the end, you always turn up in the same place. In a cold sweat, in a room by yourself. Whether you worm your way through the slits and half-collapsed apertures of the claustrophobic orchestral flesh-echo of "Body And Soul," remain calm as the empty body of "X-Neighbourhood" floats overhead like an inflatable parade balloon designed by Robert Wilson to resemble your greatest fear, or dig through the filth and rot, the squirming, nerve-invading tenderness and aching humiliating throb of "Amulet" like a badger being chased by a hound, you will never escape your fundamental destiny. That of dropping right back into the cell where you started. A place where it is just you, yourself, and the puzzle of your own mind. Only now you are there with the knowledge that your progress up to this point was only a self-imposed delusion. It never fails.
