Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Henry's Dream

A billboard. A gigantic billboard set against a fiery sunset. No, it is not the usual advertisement we are used to. It is not a warning, nor an announcement. Could it be a signal? Not even that. What the heck is it then? It is a challenge, yet another challenge of a black soul, a journey, a dream, a nightmare. The dark shades of the sunset give way to the scene: whether it’s a murderer, a werewolf, an alcoholic, a priest, a drug addict, do not lose sight of him as he walks down the street. The cold wind lashes the face, moistens it, while the head echoes with screams and moans. Mobs lynching, death squads, children born without brains, crazy heat, and relentless rain, it's the apocalypse. DADDY WON'T LEAVE YOU HENRY, DADDY WON'T LEAVE YOU BOY.

The guitar is woeful and sparse from the initial chords, emptiness surrounds. Cave paints the scene with his verses and unfolds colors: grays, blacks, smudged and gloomy reds, all on a fragile canvas that stabs and beats "and with her kisses bubbling on my lips, I rubbed the rain away and almost missed her" despair is everywhere, it's the rain season. "And I went on down the Road". "I had a dream Joe", subdued tones like a funeral elegy, funeral cadence of an intro that then marks the madness with martial steps. "Mouth full of foam and hands raised to the sky" is an autobiographical Cave painting his torrential anguish made of sin, anger, anxiety of redemption, and guilt. Our hero seems to wallow in a neurotic and straightforward chant "Where were you going Joe? In that endless, senseless, irrational wandering ". These are hallucinations and hysteria inflamed by bitterness. Even in the ballad "Straight to you" there is no lack of the stench of rot from latent decomposition. The ivory of the towers crumbles, crows like filthy saprophagous are ready to strip the remains. Despair acquires nostalgic shades, pain expands and quiets while continuing to spread viscerally. However, there is a physiological easing of tension in this piece, a relaxation, a fictitious sigh of relief, the worst is yet to come. "I'm the captain of my pain" cries Cave in "Brothers my cup is empty" where, barking and howling like a stray dog with a throat scorched by whiskey, he's come to realize he's perfectly capable of deceiving the pain for a few moments and scratching it slightly but, alas, incapable of eliminating it completely. "The awesome Cristina" died at the age of twenty-two, her body was placed in a church in Liège from which she then emerged just like the Agnus Dei. Cave interprets the mystical experiences lived by this saint between the twelfth and thirteenth in a track where, thanks to the organ, the atmosphere is arcane and opaque but at the same time lets some miserable thread of light shine through. We are in a medieval forest with Cave observing the scene on the side - here too, autobiographical spaces "The stench of human sins Is more than I can bear".

Cave is suffocated by his own evil, he staggers, a black arrow has poisoned him, the germ of evil has metastasized. It's a cancer that won't leave him, you can feel it on him as he intones the verses in a suffering crescendo whose climax and only solution is to breathe out, exhale a vial of sky, die and be reborn, "il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux" said Camus, "and I said oooohhh" says Cave almost crying. With "When I first came to town" the ascension continues, here there is the theme of perpetual wandering, a metaphor of the wandering shepherd, a damned soul longing for redemption and in search of help. Help seems to come from the sky and is symptomatic in this regard the countermelody of a female voice, almost angelic in the chorus. But, soon, the light dims "God curses the day I was born" and again "And God curse this city". There is thus a change in the mood of the wandering shepherd, sweet Jesus gives way to a cynical God who curses, and the wanderer's eyes are injected with blood for the wind blowing fiercely within him and for the anger. The same anger, thirst for revenge, hatred, with which John Finn is killed in the album's masterpiece. Cave immediately takes us to the scene or rather, to the crime scene. It's night and a frantic clock strikes the hour. A mysterious man has set his sights on his prey "and there comes John Finn’s wife with legs like scissors and butcher knives". The arrangement of the song is sublime and grows in a frenzied manner and Cave's verses become increasingly gruesome " and I slide my hand between John Finn's wife's legs – it was a hot and feral night” - it's a very dark and remarkably lyrical drama and the Bad Seeds hit hard. John Finn, blinded by anger, wants to do justice himself, but the provocateur’s knife goes into his neck before he achieves his goal. Everything is dissolved. The music relaxes, piano touches celebrate the tragic conclusion. John Finn is dead, the moon full of blood and "John Finn's wife took all the flowers from her hair and threw them to the ground" - she is a widow now, poor John Finn lies dead on the ground with flies buzzing around him. "Loom of the land" exemplifies and summarizes many leitmotifs present in the entire work. There is still the magical moon in the sky, the moon that guides and illuminates, still the wind that freezes the hands and dries the throat. Despite the languid tones there is still hope of redemption, even if freedom is far. It closes with "Jack the Ripper", sharp and piercing like a metal blade, a butcher's knife or a viper's venomous tooth. Cave twists like a snake ready to bite in live performances of this song. Here’s Jack the Ripper, the ambush of a killer, a figure on which legends abound, a mad soul, a ruthless prostitute killer - it is the final spasm. Whether it is a killer, a devil, or a sinner, death, both physical and spiritual, haunts you everywhere, along with the anxiety to be reborn. "Death jumps out of every door, plunders your money, your clothes, and your nothing."

The night prophet puts on the hood and, bent under his heavy burden, continued along the road.” Yes, I went along the road Yes, he went along the road