NICK CAVE (and cohorts)

Now, you gotta know part of my point in writing this blog isn't just to write about music I love.  The basic criterion is: do I now, have I ever, or am I likely to - ever own a single, album, or whatever by said artists.  And, do I think there's something there worth talking about, and, more importantly, do I have anything remotely intelligent (or at least amusing) to say.

Which puts me in the interesting position of sometimes writing about artists I don't exactly like, or sorta like, or respect, or think are good even if not my thang, particularly,  or frustrate me because they aren't the artists I think they should be (that latter is, I admit, completely unfair, but another point of this blog is to be honest, even at the risk of my own hip credentials.  You should have already figured out by now that I'm uncool).

Which brings me to this dude.  I have, at one time, owned several Birthday Party EPs (Bad Seed, Mutiny, and the Birthday Party EP on 4AD, released c. 1983), and used to listen to them quite a bit during a certain period (late 80's).  I also, during same period, owned the first Cave/Bad Seeds albums (through Tender Prey).  And I've heard the rest of the Birthday Party releases, many of the various offshoots (Crime and the City Solution, These Immortal Souls, Barry Adamson's solo albums), and saw Cave and the Bad Seeds perform about two dozen years ago.  And heard bits and pieces of his releases since then.  So, I do consider myself not unqualified to comment by now.

So, getting back to where I began: The Birthday Party.  I heard that EP first.  And I remember being, well, shocked.  Over the years, and even then, I'd heard lots and lots of rock music that tried to be scary.  This was the first I ever heard that actually came within a razor's edge of actually pulling it off!  I had never heard a riff as crushing as "The Friend Catcher." "Release the Bats" sounded crazed and venomous, and "Happy Birthday" just sounded crazed ... to the nth degree.  I was honestly glad when the track (and the side ended), just glad to have it over before it sent me up a wall.  I really mean it: this is not mere hyperbole.  That record came damn close to making my flesh crawl the first (and first several) times I heard it.  Even the rather jaunty "Mr. Clarinet" sounded ominous, thanks to lead singer Cave's howling vocal.  What the hell was this? Hey, I was already quite familiar with the avante side of rock music, but I'd never encountered anything like this.

And I couldn't say, exactly, that I liked it.  Maybe more that it fascinated me.  Nonetheless, I kept coming back to it.  The music wove a certain spell (I was tempted to write an "evil" spell, but then I'd be guilty of exactly what I will soon go on to accuse the Party of  - but I digress).  Anyway, it led to the purchase of the other two EP's.  I found I liked Bad Seed pretty well, but I also found something more troubling there.  That is, despite the more accessible nature of the music (a relative term), and the obvious blues (yay!) and Stooges (double yay!) influences, and despite the fact that, again, I  kept coming back to it, it was also a little bit, well ... dumb.  "The sidewalk regrets that we had to kill ... them"?  It sounded like a punchline.  It sounded like the finale of some grade-school kids gruesome monster story.  Cave's glowering from the cover only reinforced the essential silliness of the whole thing.  Now interestingly, Mutiny, despite being somewhat floundering with it's noise-fests, contained the song "Jennifer's Veil" which really does have a certain eerie power (though not nearly as much the band might like), and is one of their best moments.  It also points the way towards Cave's solo career.

Without the Party, Cave took a different route. Most rock music is all tension-and-release.  Roger Daltrey screaming "Yeah!" after 7 minutes of hypnotic synthesizer ripples, and the band explodes.  I suppose you could argue that many rock records are actually release-and-release more.  In "Jennifer," and then all over his first couple solo albums, Cave changes the game.  The songs are all tension.  Always building, never resolving.  Ratcheting up the tension more and more till it seems like the song (or the listener?) will break.  At times, it works, too: Leonard Cohen's "Avalanche," "Cabin Fever," "From Her To Eternity," "Wanted Man," especially "Tupelo," a Bo Diddley-beaten meditation on Elvis' dead twin Jesse.  Later, starting with Kicking Against the Pricks, he learned his way around a ballad, and made his best music.  "The Mercy Seat," "Stranger Than Kindness," "The Train Song" ... these are fine songs by any standard.

So what's not to like?  Well, truth be told, there's always been an aspect of Cave that never worked for me. The biggest is admittedly the whole boogie-man act.  Jim Morrison's come in for a lot of ridicule for his dark obsessions: critic Geoffrey Stokes once compared him to the Fat Boy in Dicken's Pickwick Papers ("I wants to make yer flesh creep"), while Lester Bangs once called Morrison "morbid in the most obvious possible way, and therefore cheap."  These are not entirely unfair to Morrison, but if they are true of Shaman Jimbo, they're true in spades (and spades and spades and spades) for Cave, who has invariably drawn on morbid, gruesome, death-obsessed, horror-show themes and imagery (though in recent years he seems to have leaned more towards the tortured romantic - albeit a rather Poe-esque one).  This in itself is no crime, but the sheer relentless weight with which he's always piled it on, which extends not only to lyrics and music but to iconography (cramped serial-killer handwriting on the lyric sheet; Cave's glowering face in pictures - okay, knocking Cave for looking glowering is a bit like knocking Pete Townshend for having a big nose, but still...), gets into overkill territory real fast.  What's more, it gets tiresome.  Mainly because Cave seems to take it entirely seriously.  It's as if Alice Cooper, or Ozzy Osbourne, or Lux Interior were trying to convince us that they really meant their whole stage act.  As if it were for real.  One of the more regrettable elements that came out of punk etc was the quest for authenticity - guys like Shane MacGowan and Roky Erickson git a lot of brownie points for being legitimately drunk or crazed, respectively.  And Cave has always radiated authenticity, and the press and his followers have followed along.  So, its supposed to be legit because Cave is a serious artiste, not a joker like the aforementioned.  But in the end,  I wonder if Cave's nightmare-monger act isn't as much a joke - just a more sophisticated one.

In that same line, Cave has drawn extensively from the blues, and his (presumable) love and (obvious) knowledge of it seems genuine.  Yet, I still come away thinking that what he's drawn from it is the most adolescent aspects of its appeal.  Hey, Hooker and Wolf and Robert Johnson are bad-ass music!  When you're 18/19/20 it's very cool, these old guys calling up the devil and hellhounds and how they're gonna kill that woman.  But you grow up and you realize this is only the most superficial understanding of the music.  And in the taking-yourself-too-seriously department, check the liner notes to The Firstborn is Dead, where Cave and his music are dissected with an academician's eye - mimicking the liner notes on various delta blues albums.  Again, I'm left to wonder if we're to take this seriously, or its a very sophisticated put-on.

As to Cave's undeniable lyricism (and it is undeniable), it can lapse into self-parody with alarming speed.  Robert Christgau nailed it:

Cave's admirers crow about his literary virtues--a rock musician who's actually published a novel! and scripted a film! about John Henry Abbott, how highbrow! Then they proffer dismal examples like "I am the captain of my pain," or the bordello containing--what an eye the man has--a whalebone corset! (Whalebone is very literary--it hasn't been used in underwear since well before Nick was born.) If this is your idea of great writing, you may be ripe for his cult.

True enough.

Still, as Christgau admits, Cave is talented, and interesting even when he's insufferable.  The biggest problem is a lack of fair assessment.  Australian critic James Valentine, in a mostly childish anti-Cave screed wrote:

These songs, execrable listening to most, were lauded by his followers as the most compelling utterances ever, and of course if you didn't like them, it was because you were shallow and Nick was too much for you.

Although I would challenge the "execrable listening to most" charge (Cave is, after all, a pretty popular artist, albeit a cult one), it essentially sums up the critical eye that's been turned to Cave almost from day one: he's an infallible genius - or nothing.  And Valentine is not exaggerating.

So, why am I writing about Cave?  Because as much as I find him irritating, pompous, and often just plain tiresome - I also think he's good, occasionally inspired.

Or more simply: that scene of Harry and Hermione dancing to "O Children" is the best moment in any Potter film, bar none.

***

Oh, the other offshoots?  Well, the late Rowland S. Howard's later bands were interesting in a kind of pounding, doomy way.  Crime and the City solution are too "goth" for my tastes, but These Immortal Souls are more rockist (and therefore, more interesting to these ears). These, too, spawned a host of spinoff artists (Epic Soundtracks, Barry Adamson, Mick Harvey, Howard's collaborations with Lydia Lunch, etc) too dizzying to keep track of.  Howard was quite a guitar player, to be sure.  I'm sorry he's gone.  But none of this stuff is in the collection - or likely to be added anytime soon.  My shelves are crowded.  You gotta be more than interesting to get a slot anymore.

The Birthday Party allmusic
The Birthday Party wiki
The Birthday Party official site
Nick Cave allmusic
Nick Cave wiki
Nick Cave official site
Rowland S. Howard allmusic
Rowland S. Howard wiki
Outta the Black and Into the Ether - a Rowland Howard site, lots of info here


Essential Listening

Nick Cave's significant body of work can be explored here.  I don't have any favorites, nor is there a compilation I can give the thumbs-up to.  Listen for yourself.  Same goes for The Birthday Party,  Crime and the City Solution, and These Immortal Souls.  Rowland Howard's solo albums are here, but you'll have to look elsewhere for sound clips.

Essential Reading

I can't give any personal recommendations, but there's a book entitled Nick Cave: The Birthday Party and Other Epic Adventures by Robert Brokenmouth (a name I suspect Cave appreciates) on Amazon, as well at least three other bios.  I suspect there may be many other publications in Europe, the UK, and Australia.  Cave has written a couple novels and had at least one book of lyrics published, too. Like I said, I'm the wrong person to ask.