CARNAGE

I have loved Nick Cave's music for a very long time. Christ, almost three decades. Sometimes I have trouble believing I've been alive for so long. I hadn't listened to Cave in years until about two weeks ago when I thought I might like to check on his body of work for newness. Or maybe I was checking back up on life. Since struggling to regain myself after so many years smacked out on the street, I feared checking my periphery for the old me. I fairly just wanted that fuck to die. Only that fuck is me and I can't merely ignore him to death as much as I'd like to. When I saw Cave made a record called "Carnage" I wondered if he'd endured a similar thing.

Fellow (EX) junky, you know. It goes that way with us. 

From the first track I knew I'd hit home. "Hand Of God" at first sounds like someone going down to the river to be baptized. The line, "let the river cast its spell on me" conjures up images of baptism, but close listening reveals a picture of a man who, tired of seeking and those who seek, decides to commit his body to water. This guy doesn't want to come back. He wants to swim out to the middle and stay there...maybe forever.

Ellis' backup vocal comes on like a dope rush, the kind that takes your breath makes you fear death, then ends with a streak of perfection pulling you into the divine luminescent ether. I chuckle writing this. Most people I know would be annoyed by the backup singing. I can't help but love it. There's something else to it as well. As much as it comes on like the rush it's also a bit like the reverse rush of dopesick where the pain stretches your body to the breaking point and then twists itself out of your skin in a pile of punishing sweat. Hand of God, indeed. 

The craziness of "Old Time" takes me back to the early Cave days, back when he and the Bad Seeds were new, and Ellis wasn't even there. Piano chords like a distorted guitar, smashing notes at random like Cave is standing and freestyling while occasionally pounding the piano as if the fires of his life have always been the fault of the keys. I love that. I used to do my guitar the same way. 

"Shattered Ground" may be the best love song I've ever heard. I used to tell everyone--"Only Tom Waits and Nick Cave can write love songs. Everyone else fucking sucks at it." I don't know if I really meant that but songs like this are why I said it. The story he tells here screws a bolt into my knobby old heart. Generally, I don't like being reminded that I have one of those but goddamn man...I'm not sure who he's singing to but whoever she is he fucking means it. My guess is PJ Harvey. 

It's melancholy, sweet and romantic with a darkness of depth reflected in the ambience of the music. The story in the lyrics is gripping, telling a story you know will wind up doomed but maybe you're in love with doom itself--"Only you are beautiful, only you are true, I don't care what they say, and they can scream their fuckin' faces blue again." The way he says it. Yeah. I get that. For some of us, love is like that. Even when they make sense the last thing some men want to hear when they're in love is the jabber from the mouths of babes. Doesn't matter if we know we're doomed, or stupid, or will wind up in a bad goodbye. Couples are Bonnie and Clyde in these moments, so fuck everyone else.

And then there is the gem that is White Elephant". I almost don't know what to say about it. One commenter said that it sounded like a confused beast lumbering around with no place to go. I get a duality between a man lying in the throes of drug rush reminiscing in the whole wrong way. The wrong kind of sentiment, locked into his angry narcissism, rotting cooly in his desire to send all the humans back to God in his withdrawal-driven misanthropy. The guitar an ambient wail, synth softly chuffing portentous musical notes until Cave speaks, almost as if to himself, "I'll shoot you all for free if you so much as look at me."

Then it slams drunkenly into an Irish booze jangle that makes me feel like Christmas is coming. Something about the bells. But with everything that came before, you could put this song into a gangster movie. Scene with a man carrying a Molotov is walking to the target locale, gritting his teeth, ready. And then he throws his makeshift bomb--while the people scatter from the sticky fire, he is laughing from his place of lurking, watching the madness and feeling like it's Christmas.

I get that, too. I wouldn't do it, but I get it.

The music in "Lavender Fields" could be better. It's almost like an afterthought accompanying a brilliant, gripping poem. If you let it, the poem will take you into a contemplative place...I keep deleting everything I begin to say about it. This song is almost like a private love. "They ask me how I've changed; I say it is a singular road." In other words, private and different for everyone. I'll not say more and let it speak to you for itself and that goes for the other songs as well. 

This record renewed a little of the old love I had in my heart. I suppose that's a good thing. For now, I think I'll keep that love record bound.

Maybe swim to the middle.

Maybe stay there for a while.