From Her To Eternity.
There was once an Australian rock group called The Birthday Party - I have not heard them, but I like to imagine their music as a bracing, volatile extravaganza of darkness so terrible it had to either split or consume its creators. Whether this myth is true, the band did split and from the ashes, in 1983, came Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Nick Cave believed himself a poet, appreciated the stylings of gospel music as well as rock, was a heroin addict and appears to have been fascinated by America's myths of violence. He had the idea for a new band, and together with fellow Birthday Party-er Mick Harvey, came up with the Bad Seeds, the original line-up of which included Barry Adamson from Magazine and Blixa Bargeld, the howling frontman from Germany's Einsturzende Neubauten. The band's debut in 1984 set up a clear sound and purpose. Angular, post-punk thrash with plain old noise thrown in for the hell of it, the music sounds menacing, dangerous at close quarters. Nick is at the center of all proceedings, shrieking and contorting, proclaiming like some manic prophet of the damned...
So October is my month for psychotic music. And Nick's first record was his scariest; slowly but surely a sense of melody, balladry and even tenderness crept into his bleak worldview, leading to a run of eloquent, finely wrought and somewhat mannered albums in the 90s. In the beginning his gothic tales are unrelieved by beauty, grace or mawkishness. Everything that comes on From Her to Eternity is ugly and brutal.
It begins with silence. Then the silence gives way to a cover of Leonard Cohen's Avalanche. In an ironic shift, where the original had no drums on it (Leonard was probably still traumatized by what his producer did to So Long, Marianne) Nick's rendition is driven by lengthy drum rolls that rush up to your ears like the tide. The original functions as a cold put-down to a lover's pretensions; Nick's emotive and controlled delivery sounds like he's fighting the urge to strangle her. This ranks up there with the best cover songs of all time: it completely reinvents the song.
Cabin Fever! is one of the best examples of noise-rock I can think of. It's a destructive song; it's letting the beast out. Blixa's influence is clear, especially as Nick lets loose with his best contortionist screaming, choking on the awful details of life at sea. It's a highly ominous and deranged, somewhat brilliant and tuneless monstrosity. The best part is either the horror movie piano (like a primal, sped up Sense of Doubt) or the suggestion at the end that the ship and crew sank a long while ago....
Well of Misery slows the pace to a crawl, based on the old chain-gang song - a line is sung and parroted by the band in somber, deadened tones. The gothic version of a well and bucket: "it swings slow and aching like a bell/and its toll is dead and hollow." Driving over the music is the percussion equivalent of a flogging. You get five minutes of mind-numbing repetitions in the lyrics, the bass line and the rhythm, alleviated only by the branches of harmonica and other noise in the band.
The classic From Her to Eternity is next, and it's a prime example of the Bad Seeds' abilities: as soon as the drums sound, you know something bad is going to happen. Random machine noises emphasize the violence of the narrative: an obsession so throttling that murder is the only way out.
The album on reissue is hereby cut in half to include a single of In the Ghetto. It's a respectful rendition and points toward the impassioned balladry of later years. Unfortunately, 1: Nick is a great singer, but he is no Elvis and 2: Mac Davis was no Nick Cave. It's just too simple to fit in with the literate ravings found elsewhere.
The flipside of the single was The Moon is in the Gutter, a bluesy vignette of city slum miasma. "The moon is in the gutter/and the stars wash down the sink," is good imagery. "The moon blind my eye with opal cataracts," is not so good. But it is an example of Nick's habit for overwriting. Oh well. Listen for a cut in from Wordsworth!
Those songs are curios, but they do make a difference to the pacing and restore lucidity just when you thought he couldn't do anything but froth at the mouth. It's back to the album proper with Saint Huck. "If you wanna catch a saint/then bait your hook/let's take a walk." Now this is punk. Nick plays devil's advocate, taking American icon Huckleberry Finn, luring him into the big city, dragging him to the bottom and annihilating him there. Who did this Australian think he was? The band drives forward relentlessly, alternating spare claustrophobia with heavier rock, and who can forget Nick's yodel once they've heard it?
For percussion, Wings Off Flies utilizes a man either nailing a picture or a coffin... Nick sing-speaks this one like he's at a poetry reading in someone's cellar. Musically, it's no great shakes, but it does have black humour going for it.
At a whopping nine minutes, A Box for Black Paul is the outstanding moment - after a mob kills Black Paul, Nick relates the details, sometimes with vitriol, sometimes with plaintive sympathy. "Who threw the first stone at Black Paul?" The song progresses quietly enough, showing the witnesses to have no pity for the dead man and as it continues, the story takes on a supernatural tinge. Paul's last words are a perfect touch and the reserve in both music and singing makes this last track the very best.
Because this is the reissue, there's a live version of From Her to Eternity attached. In 1987, Cave fan Wim Wenders made a film called Der Himmel Uber Berlin, known in English as Wings of Desire. The Bad Seeds showed up for a performance at the end of the film (they were one of the highlights, by the way) and their fiery rendition of this song holds up well against the original.
In the 80s, when all the old guard of rock music were selling out and becoming insufferable, it was left to the underground artists to make the decade seem worthwhile. Nick Cave was among these groups, and while I can't advise any but noise-rock aficionados starting with this CD, I have to admit it's a far more visceral experience than his later work. The secret to liking his music, I've found, is to buy into his worldview, to believe his visions, at least for the duration of the visit. Do that and you've got some awesome listening experiences ahead of you, not least of which is this frightening original statement.
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