I appear to be mining my love for heavily feedbacked guitar with some recent posts in this series. Here is another one, this time from The Birthday Party's debut album - Hee Haw. Though the Birthday Party came to prominence in the post punk era, they were only loosely related to that. They certainly took some of its desire to explore the boundless musical extremities, similar to The Pop Group. Despite Nick Cave's youthful exploration of dissolute histrionics, he is also exploring the quirks of a number of his own literary interests. His liking for drawing dark, twisted folklorish characters in his songs is exemplified here in The Friend Catcher. Musically The Birthday Party had few references to traditional rock, preferring to amplify a perverted mix of fairground, music hall and nursery rhymes. Everything turned up to a high volume of unsettling weirdness.
You can see the stylistic trajectory of Nick Cave's early career stretching out from this one track. Blessed as he was with a talented band of fellow musical brothers on the fringes. Tracy Pew on bass, given to consuming alcohol and drugs to the excess, who would to die six years on from this moment. There is Roland S Howard owner of the wild despairing guitar sound. Leaving the band before they morphed into the Bad Seeds. Died at the age of 50 from chronic Hepatitis C. Leaving only Cave and Mick Harvey from that band. Cave appears always to need a close musical collaborator and Harvey provided that for a long time. Caves dominant creative urgency and drive is, I imagine, a satisfying wave to ride with for a while. Aligning your own momentum to it. But it might also cramp or suffocate one's own.
She, by my chinny chin.chin.
Eee-oh Eee-oh
Like a zippo smokes the way
Hope, around
You and your lungs and your wrists
They throb like trains
Choo choo choose
It's a prison of sound
I poke around...
Whatever this is all about, it doesn't come across as remotely healthy. Painting a heightened picture of the darker side of humanity. A malign gothic gremlin emerging from the shadow side of our murky collective psyche.
No comments:
Post a Comment