album // Your Funeral My Trial
Proving his critics totally wrong, Nick Cave's fourth album with The Bad Seeds is an album of 9 new compositions, proving once and for all that his creative flame had not flickered and died with the previous collection of covers and influences (Kicking Against The Pricks). Indeed, this all-too-brief album burns fiercely with a combination of fuels - introverted balladry, intense blues-inspired rock and even a raging torrent of abuse toward journos with the closing - and appropriately titled - 'Scum'. Recorded at Berlin's Hansa Studios with Tony Cohen as co-producer and Flood as engineer, the Bad Seeds here comprised Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld, Thomas Wydler and occasional contributions from Barry Adamson.
Proceedings commence with the title track, which is perhaps the most incredibly mournful and melancholy piece of music I have heard (from Cave or otherwise), with a simple piano line and descending bass section so loaded with sadness that one cannot help but be moved by the song's anguished tale of a relationship gone painfully wrong. Indeed, sadness and loss are recurring themes throughout this album. 'Stranger To Kindness' is case in point - a well-crafted production that seems to ebb and flow into and out of earshot, with Cave telling us how he finds himself cruel and heartless. At times self-deprecating and self-pitious by turns, Your Funeral... as a body of work pulses with a sense of maudlin indicating some seismically sorrowful event must have taken place to have inspired Cave's writing.
The mood changes on several tracks, such as the brutal closing tirade 'Scum', or the frenzied sexual mantra 'Hard-On For Love', but both have echoes of desperation and bitterness. The frankly weird 'The Carny', running at over seven minutes, stands uncomfortably apart from the other tracks here. A tale of myth about what appears to be a travelling freak show of miscreants and misfits, dwarves and strongmen, 'The Carny' is spooky, hostile and tragi-comic by turns, a sort of literature-style follow-up to And The Ass Saw The Angel. Cave and Bargeld take on various charcters in this theatrical piece, all the while backed by a soundtrack rooted in a sinister circus / fairground style.
Overall, this album is breathtaking, and given sufficient inclination I would wax lyrical about each and every track here. However, suffice it to say that this is a typically masterful album, full of unique lyrical content, inventive musicianship and craftsmanlike production. Genius, but no more than we would expect, perhaps.