album // From Her To Eternity
I once read somewhere that when this was released way back in 1984, certain critics were less than pleased with Nick Cave's decision to record two cover versions (Leonard Cohen's 'Avalanche' and the Elvis Presley hit 'In The Ghetto'). The implication was that Cave's individual songwriting ability, after alternating with Rowland S Howard as main lyricist in The Birthday Party, could not stretch across a whole solo album. Well, okay, fair point. Fair, until, that is, you actually hear the renditition of 'Avalanche' that opens the album (which is so quintessentially Cave-like that you have to re-read the booklet to make sure), or immerse yourself in the gritty beauty of his 'In The Ghetto'. I'm surprised that The King ever managed to pull off such a bleakly marvellous song as this, and listening to his version alongside Cave's, one feels that it is Nick Cave for whom this song was written.
Aside from the two cover versions, the album's remaining seven tracks* are filled with an awe-inspiring array of blues-informed articulations of dark emotion and the blood-drenched story-telling that dominated Cave's songwriting style up to and including the watermark Murder Ballads. Intriguingly, the tracks themselves sound very different to The Birthday Party, benefiting from Neubauten stalwart Blixa Bargeld's inventive approach to guitar playing; noisy and somehow restrained, these songs are filled with a wretchedness over which Nick effortlessly howls and whispers his way through his imaginative lyrics.
The early career highlight 'From Her To Eternity' aside, the tracks are sparse and slow-paced, the rolling, boiling 'Cabin Fever' being a notably raucous exclusion. The 'gaps' in the songs allow the musicians - Mick Harvey (drums), Blixa Bargeld (guitar), Hugo Race (guitar) and Barry Adamson (bass) - to provide texturally-dense, dark soundscapes to match the lyrical content. Cave's then girlfriend Anita Lane is credited as writing much of the material here with Cave, and her picture features in the inner sleeve, however she doesn't appear to be on the record at all. Foetus' Jim Thirlwell - who occasionally appeared with The Birthday Party on tour helped out with writing of the music on 'Wings Off Flies', and seasoned Mute studio guru Flood is credited with engineering the sessions that resulted in the album, although no producer is mentioned so one presumes that the band produced the tracks themselves.
The faltering, piano-led 'A Box For Black Paul' appears to describe the demise of The Birthday Party (Black Paul = BP = Birthday Party, peoole have speculated), and - if this is to believed - finds Cave recounting a story that suggests that pressure and critical acclaim killed off the band, not internal power struggles. 'These are the devil flowers,' he sings, almost as if reading from a particularly evocative review. Cave also seems almost concerned that no-one would actually care enough to miss the band, an inferiority complex that I haven't noticed in any of his subsequent writing.
The drunken jazz of 'The Moon Is In The Gutter' stands out, its particularly methodical plodding enabling Cave to build the tension up from confiding whisper to pissed yet emotional tones. 'Saint Huck' is made of the same stuff as 'From Her To Eternity', pounding piano lines and distorted guitars rolling towards several cimaxes / crescendos within the track's seven minute duration; Cave's articulation of the word 'opp-o-tunity' plants this track firmly into the soul of the Deep South, an insane blues montage reminiscent of Cave's novel And The Ass Saw The Angel. The song is satisfyingly lengthy, but never boring, as Cave takes us through this sinister, twisted world of bones and rats and death, bounded by the Mississipi's sluicing and impenetrable depth.
With From Her To Eternity, Cave set a particularly strong precedent for his rich solo career, and there isn't a song here that isn't swathed in sonic and lyrical greatness. The Bad Seeds, even in this early incarnation are Cave's perfectly haggard backing band, coloring his wretched and desperate lyrics with shades of blood, bone, anguish and sorrow, to sometimes devastating effect.
*The CD edition of this album features an additional version of the lead track 'From Her To Eternity' taken from Wim Wender's 1987 film Der Himmel über Berlin. The sound on this version - engineered by regular Bad Seeds technician Tony Cohen - is clearer, less raw and Cave's vocal is more mature, less raw and ravaged. Although not mentioned, I presume that the line-up for this version would be different given that Adamson had left the Bad Seeds by the time the new version was recorded.