Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Ghosteen

The cover of an album is often an ornament, an accessory aspect. Sometimes, however, if you know how to look at it, it already tells you a lot about what the artist wants to convey.

In many of Nick Cave's albums, especially the early ones (which I don't really love, except for “The Good Son”), he appears on the cover. In “No More Shall We Part” (an immense masterpiece), there's a drawing, a lotus flower.

In Ghosteen, the artwork is meticulously crafted, deliberately so. No more real images, they're no longer needed. There's a fairytale landscape, draped over the real world, because the real world doesn’t know how to enter the fairytale. Flowers, countless flowers, lush greenery, enveloping, animals. Many animals. Each one has its role. At the bottom left, a tiger, off to the side, silent, seated. Just above it, a weary lion. Behind, almost hidden, a peacock displaying its tail, but no one sees it. Below, nearby, a little monkey with its baby in its lap. Many pink flamingos, one white. In the background, white horses running in the wind, and above them more wind, and birds, strange birds that don't fly in flocks, each heading in its own direction. At the center of the lake, a large white horse with all its legs in the water, standing still, its head lowered. And then there’s him, the real master of the scene. The only one looking straight, towards your eyes, watching you. A small white lamb.

There is no longer space to roar, to scratch at life. No one wants to see your performances anymore; it's time to hold a child in your arms, to start a different race, a flight. It's time to observe the tenderness of a small defenseless creature which is the focal point of the world. And he gives you the calmness and hope you seek.

He is calm, he is defenseless.

There are souls born with one foot, sometimes both, already in damnation, who are morbidly attracted by the invisible boundary between the impulse of life and that of self-destruction, and Nick has demonstrated this abundantly since he wandered, as a young man, in the most infamous areas of Melbourne, among dealers and prostitutes, the only people who conveyed something truly interesting to him,

But now damnation no longer has an emergency exit within reach; it's total. More than damnation, it is condemnation. One cannot survive a child. The only way to do it is to know him at the center of a new universe, and know him to be a bit lost, but ultimately serene, even proud.

Nick delves into pain, not for self-indulgence, as an outward or amplified attitude typical of some unlucky bohemians. His path is laid out in torment, and he must follow it. To get there, to that enchanted place.

And so he distorts reality, stretches sounds, warps images, whispers his own voice, drags it like a heavy stone, then gathers it up and hurls it toward the expanses of hope, where the majestic expanded orchestral atmospheres painted by Warren Ellis, his faithful sonic architect, mischievous wizard who bridges the pain with the Elysian fields, finds a way to suck the darkness in which the evening is shrouded and project fertile flashes of light upon it that, slowly, thin out an unimaginable fog to break through.

If not with faith, perhaps, or with a call to the sacredness of love, or perhaps with the assurance that it's only a matter of time, and then it will be dawn, it will be a new beginning.

"Nothing is more valuable than beauty, they say

There is nothing but love

And smoky fields and black butterflies

And the screaming horses and your brilliant green, so beautiful

And your shining green eyes, so beautiful

I am beside you

Find me in the sun

I am beside you, I am within you

In the sunlight

In the sun"