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Rating: The firstborn is dead... let the sky break, spew out its tears and dress in mourning this red earth.
The prophet is the voice that fills the silence between the lightning and the thunder: he is a hooded snake, mad and sensual, with the face of a vampire worn out by thirst. He throws his cigarette, points to the sky... and begins to snarl: "A storm will come to Tupelo, raging as only the Apocalypse can be. The rivers will turn into streets, the streets will turn into rivers, a messiah will come to teach us to sin, people will call him 'The King' and his birth will be marked by the death of those who preceded him."
The flood ends. The sun returns to shed light on murky stories of guilty men and dirty souls. Stories, men, and souls that, perhaps, were better left hidden.
There is a man madly in love with a little girl ("Say Goodbye To The Little Girl Tree"). He feels like he's going crazy as he thinks of that white neck, that skin writhing under the dress... the still uncertain curves of her body... and knows that killing himself is the only way to quell his lust. There is a train made of suffering that dances on the tracks of memories ("Train Long-Suffering"): you hear it puffing under the clatter of guitars and its whistle is the howl of the prophet chained to the engine. There is a black crow left alone to rule over a cornfield that stretches to the horizon ("Black Crow King") and prison cells, death row inmates ("Knockin' On Joe"), pursued outlaws who have lost all will to live ("Wanted Man"), broken teeth counted in front of the bathroom mirror of some bar, and guitar strings that make you bleed ("Blind Lemon Jefferson").
The obsession that permeated the immense "From Her To Eternity" returns. The angry hisses, the screeching sounds, the retches and the growls of the animal wounded more in mind than in body return: only more vivid, even more real.
"The First Born Is Dead" is an album rich with insights, deeply steeped in Cave’s obsession with the images and colors of the Southern states, with certain characters that accompany them and, above all, with their sounds and their music: a desolate and hallucinatory scenario, equally Sergio Leone and Ken Russell.
Standing out among all is the crippled, apocalyptic and "tribal" blues of "Tupelo": a tangle of references, biblical and otherwise (the namesake track by John Lee Hooker), visions and bold blends of sacred and profane. The messiah is none other than Elvis (of whom Tupelo is, indeed, the birthplace and whose twin brother died shortly after birth), but Cave, an exasperated and visionary prophet, predicts his coming as a second Christ, who will be born clutching his brother's heels, slipping into the world "with the glory of an unwanted guest" (just as will happen, a few years later, to Euchrid, the protagonist of "And the Ass Saw the Angel").
From there on it's a desolate kaleidoscope of characters and men drowned in misery, amidst a continuous intertwining of voices and gospel choirs, slithering slide guitars and thin threads of harmonica. The times stretch, the themes of travel, abandonment, and a life now dwindling recur continuously: what gives chills, this time, are not the cacophonous gusts of "From Her To Eternity", but the slow pace, the inexorable advance of memories. Cave continues to pay his tribute to the great demons of the past (as he did, for example, in "Well Of Misery"), immersing himself in the role of the mournful and hallucinatory bluesman, partially rewriting Dylan's "Wanted Man" cover, evoking the spirit of Blind Lemon Jefferson.
The music (with the sole exception, perhaps, of "Train Long-Suffering"), is reduced to the bone: few guitar notes, few drum hits, clapping of hands, oppressive and decadent strings ("Black Crow King"), a handful of chords on an old piano covered in dust. Cave's voice is enough, increasingly "an instrument of itself". Now little more than a whispered lament, a desperate prayer for redemption ("Knockin' On Joe"), now a chilling snarl of anger ("Tupelo"), it insinuates itself with a sneer into the creases of those who dare to listen to it, only to hurl its entire load of rancor, fanaticism and frustration at them. The exasperation of the tones remains, the screams and the cavernous abysses of his possessed voice remain. Even more vivid are the "rural thriller" atmospheres. Yet there's a hint of that boundless sweetness peeking through that will more prominently characterize productions to come: Cave's eye is not petty, his spirit is not accusatory. He narrates the deeds of this strange bunch of misfits almost with the compassion of one who has been through it, who knows pain all too well.
Twenty years after its release, "The Firt Born Is Dead" remains, in my opinion, one of Nick Cave's most poignant and beautiful frescoes. It is pure musical expressionism, soaked in poetry: a bit like discovering the nerves of the human soul and playing them like the strings of a violin.
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