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Rating: "To our love send a dozen white lilies
To our love send a coffin of wood
To our love send back all the letters
To our love a Valentine of blood..."
("People ain't no good")
I have often wondered what could be the appropriate soundtrack for the end of a love. The ideal musical accompaniment to underline the death of a feeling.
Could it be an album that you listened to together with the object of desire in question, and that would masochistically bring to light, the memories, the passionate nights when you said "forever"? Or something less profound but sentimental, a record with some key tracks that trigger tears, listened to in particularly dark moments of the closing process? But so it is, the Moving Sidewalks have already been reviewed and All By Myself is not exactly what I listen to. When I found myself alone, in my perpetually messy room, I chose a "neutral" album (for the memories, not the feelings), that summarized the emotions and feelings that unfortunately pervade me, but over which I have no control.
Everything has already been decided. Out of ignorance, lack of sensitivity, boredom, or perhaps simply for some new piece of ass. Selavì, as one of the more cynical ones here would say, myself included, so the only thing left for me is this drifting wreck I've clung to.
The boatman's call, strangely, is one of the few Cave albums that has not yet been reviewed on de-b, and as a non-fanatic of the Inky King, it's certainly my favorite, one of the most intimate, the most delicate and bitter, a love story, its end, the quest for a God who can quell the suffering from the loss of what seemed absolute, infinite, special. For what inevitably dies, but we often bring to an early death, out of laziness or lack of desire, because we are children of a throwaway world, which teaches us to trample on the most primitive values, to give up at the first obstacle, to no longer fight for the beautiful things that come our way.
The boatman's call is the album that follows Murder Ballads, where anger and madness mingled with the most traditional culture of storytellers. It's a therapeutic and introspective album for Cave who, after a divorce and countless personal and artistic vicissitudes, finds himself deeply meditating on the meaning of the purest yet so complex concepts: love, death, faith, rationality, hate. "I don't believe in an interventionist God but if I did I would ask Him to watch over you" ("Into my arms")
It is a continuous asking of questions, self-examination, not being afraid to look inside and admit one's weaknesses, as a man, as a father ("Far from me"), as a wretch and common mortal like everyone. It's wondering if laziness and ignorance have led us to be without flags, without principles. God has forgotten us and we have forgotten Him ("Where do we go now but nowhere"). The beauty of the tracks, their hybrid of sweetness and bitterness has often been my companion on these melancholic evenings. It made me feel less alone, less stupid. Because we all suffer and each of us suffers for something that isn't so important to others. We are focused on our pain, on feeling "unique" thanks to this pain. And at the same time, in our fragility we manage to be devastating, to cause immense harm to those who care for us, of course, we prefer to kill than to be killed, often we adopt malice to try to survive the pain. Love and death, which have always gone together and increasingly become confused with each other.
The boatman's call is this, the account of a man who sums up the first half of his life, his role in society, better still in the universe, feeling immensely small but weighed down with suffering, love poorly given, to oneself and others.
"So hold me and hold me, don't tell me your name
This morning will be wiser than this evening is
Then leave me to my enemied dreams
And be quiet as you leave, Miss..."
R.I.P. VV
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Into My Arms (04:15)
I don't believe in an interventionist God
But I know, darling, that you do
But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him
Not to intervene when it came to you
Not to touch a hair on your head
To leave you as you are
And if He felt He had to direct you
Then direct you into my arms
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms
And I don't believe in the existence of angels
But looking at you I wonder if that's true
But if I did I would summon them together
And ask them to watch over you
To each burn a candle for you
To make bright and clear your path
And to walk, like Christ, in grace and love
And guide you into my arms
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms
But I believe in Love
And I know that you do too
And I believe in some kind of path
That we can walk down, me and you
So keep your candles burning
And make her journey bright and pure
That she will keep returning
Always and evermore
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms
04 Brompton Oratory (04:06)
Up those stone steps I climb
Hail this joyful day's return
Into its great shadowed vault I go
Hail the Pentecostal morn
The reading is from Luke 24
Where Christ returns to his loved ones
I look at the stone apostles
Think that it's alright for some
And I wish that I was made of stone
So that I would not have to see
A beauty impossible to define
A beauty impossible to believe
A beauty impossible to endure
The blood imparted in little sips
The smell of you still on my hands
As I bring the cup up to my lips
No God up in the sky
No devil beneath the sea
Could do the job that you did, baby
Of bringing me to my knees
Outside I sit on the stone steps
With nothing much to do
Forlorn and exhausted, baby
By the absence of you
11 Far From Me (05:33)
For you dear, I was born
For you I was raised up
For you I've lived and for you I will die
For you I am dying now
You were my mad little lover
In a world where everybody fucks everybody else over
You who are so far from me
Far from me
So far from me
Way across some cold neurotic sea
Far from me
I would talk to you of all matter of things
With a smile you would reply
Then the sun would leave your pretty face
And you'd retreat from the front of your eyes
I keep hearing that you're doing best
I hope your heart beats happy in your infant breast
You are so far from me
Far from me
Far from me
There is no knowledge but i know it
There's nothing to learn from that vacant voice
That sails to me across the line
From the ridiculous to the sublime
It's good to hear you're doing so well
But really can't you find somebody else that you can ring and tell
Did you ever
Care for me?
Were you ever
There for me?
So far from me
You told me you'd stick by me
Through the thick and through the thin
Those were your very words
My fair-weather friend
You were my brave-hearted lover
At the first taste of trouble went running back to mother
So far from me
Far from me
Suspended in your bleak and fishless sea
Far from me
Far from me
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Other reviews
By emapanny
The sunset is like a final and powerful statement of one who does not want to pass, of one who knows they must die and then rise again with the same strength, the same intensity.
I have renounced you because my doubt has become fear and the fear panic: men seemed stronger than you.
