Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds
The Firstborn Is Dead

THE REVIEW

Nick Cave is everything and nothing... but also much more... it's already in the name... Nick Cave... Nicola Caverna... I don't know how many have given him a social/space/temporal placement... I never thought about it... he's someone who's used life, that's true... but life, egocentric as it is, has used him... I'm not an expert on the subject and, above all, I don't know how to review... or at least, I've never tried... but I chose this album to make a concrete tribute to the enormous art that Nick Cave, throughout all these years, has given us... and still continues to do so... this album, for me, is not an album... it has never been, really. . but don't misunderstand me... more than an album, for me it's always been a fresco... a sound fresco... decadent poetry and melody... pain and dark sounds... intimacy and pained notes... a fresco that is increasingly becoming a true painting... and the canvas are these very seven sound gems (which became nine, with the addition of "The Six Strings That Drew Blood" and the single version of "Tupelo", included only in the CD edition)... a canvas dense with tension, parsimony, darkness... you get lost in this canvas, even unknowingly... you cannot remain indifferent to it... you get so drawn into the storm ("Tupelo"), walk for days in an apparently deserted cornfield ("Black Crow King"), listen dreamily to the story of an outlaw who no longer wants to live ("Wanted Man"), hurry to not miss the long black train ("Train Long-Suffering") and maybe see yourself in that man who sings the desire to not let the woman/girl he's in love with grow up ("Say Goodbye To The Little Girl")? well, in this sound journey, you have a companion though... the sound... you feel it close, friendly, confidant, master of your most hidden emotions... you tremble with the heartbeat of Mick Harvey's drums... you pant along with Blixa Bargeld's guitar on the verge of distortion... you dream claustrophobic images along with Barry Adamson's pulsating bass... and you reach the point of feeling like one of them! You too have become a "bad seed"... or at least you try to be... but something is missing... you're a seed, it needs the plant... the plant is the voice... His voice... it comes to devastate you, but it's a more than pleasant sensation... the timbre is dark, almost disturbing... the painting (fresco or painting as it may be) is composed: Nick Cave is the painter... the Bad Seeds are his colors... the canvas, the poems of love and death that trace the path... and you? well, you are the timid observer... the title? "The Firstborn Is Dead"... the firstborn is dead... but every time this painting's exposition is admired, well, the firstborn rises again!