Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Your Funeral... My Trial

The creative essence of Nick Cave with Your funeral, my trial undoubtedly reaches one of its peaks. Heart-wrenching, melancholic, but also dramatic and sinister, this third studio album of his represents a point of consolidation and change. In my opinion, it closes an initial artistic phase that frees itself from certain edginess inherited from his early experiences (see Birthday Party), softening in a haze of noir poetry the rebellious aspirations that still emerge here and there. And it amplifies a narrative introspection full of shadows that then becomes a reference for future works.

Moreover, the very nature of Cave's narrative style almost never leaves room for lyricism with luminous contours, except in some episodes of a more romantic and less obsessive work like The Good Son (1990). Mystical references, an approach to the icons of south-western culture, and especially a visceral approach to the controversies of emotion make Your funeral, my trial an authentic vortex of fleeting glimmers and seductive darkness.

The beautiful and intense lyrics have here more than elsewhere the right balance of narrativity and introspection, rich in novelistic images and characters that emerge from the songs with a descriptive force of a great author.

The album's title is a synthesis of its contents and in some ways also an allegorical projection of certain atmospheres with which the songs are imbued. The scent of crime and guilt hovers in many of Cave's works. Here, his face on the cover looks like that of the accused that two years later we will find in the long and hammering opening of Tender Prey; namely the fearless and deceitful protagonist who is about to go to the electric chair (The Mercy Seat).

Produced by the great Flood, Your funeral, my trial is a sort of musical fresco in eight frames, among which the famous The Carny stands out, made famous by the film Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders, who included a vibrant live performance in it. The hypnotic track, between fairground organs and band orchestrations worthy of a shabby and touching circus, serves as the background to Cave's sordid narrative litany.

And no one saw the carny go, the weeks flew past

Until the show moved on, leaving the caravan behind

Parked on the south-east ridge

While the company crossed the bridge

With the first rain filling the riverbed

It shone, yes, it did, at the borders

Far away, far away

The Carny, as Cave himself recounted, was born from an improvisation at the end of a day of recording in the studio. A handful of notes, brief hints that gradually enrich themselves with sound interweaving and thus become one of his most intense and visionary narrative lyrics.

"When I recorded it, basically everyone had gone home. There was some piano music that had been written, and when it came time to sing, I just sat on a chair, a table, a typewriter, various types of objects around me, hundreds of lyrics, a microphone, ashtrays, a lot of alcohol, and I just sat there on the chair all night and invented the story and sang it into the microphone."

No less moving and sordid is the song that gives the album its title, with its syncopations and piano arithmias weaving one of the most nostalgic and dreamlike atmospheres in the entire history of the Australian singer-songwriter. A subdued low-sound perfectly coherent with the mocking and disillusioned visions of the lyrics (I'm a no good/ and I've traveled a twisted mile.... /I watched the moon turn to a fang...) captures the listener with a masterful melodic turn.

But it is especially the initial Sad Waters that demonstrates the author's ability to combine music and lyricism in a fresco rich in chromaticism, sometimes light, sometimes heavy. Sad Waters is a poignant love story capable of drawing a tear even from the least emotionally sensitive souls.

Mary in the shallows laughing

Where the carp dart

Frightened by the new shadows she casts

Through these sad waters and through my heart

Following this, songs with stronger sound impact like Jack’s Shadow and Hard On For Love adhere more closely to the compositional tradition of The Bad Seeds ensemble: pounding rhythms, obsessive basses, choruses repeated insistently. Here, the trace left by previous works seems to regain the upper hand, and it is not inaccurate to say that these pieces represent the most predictable and mannered part of the album.

A matrix that, however, we will find again later in Cave's path, although purified from the post-punk reminiscences of which Birthday Party was a byproduct.

The sinister, almost unsettling She Fell Away brings emotional depth back to elevated levels of penetration, finding balance suitable to the album's plot. The continuous suspensions in the structure of the piece, the rarefied and almost cinematic arrangement touch deep chords and convey a sense of atavistic memory and unresolved doubts. Is it a murder committed in a moment of madness that it talks about?

I did not see the shape of the cracks

As I knelt down to pray

I did not see the yawning gap, no sometimes

At night I feel the end is near

My gun goes crazy in my hand

She fell, she fell

The album ends with Stranger than Kindness, a song written by faithful Blixa Bargeld with Anita Lane (another name closely linked to Birthday Party and the genesis of The Bad Seeds) and Long Time Man, a cover of the little-known song by American songwriter Tim Rose.

Not all fans of Nick Cave consider Your funeral, my trial one of his masterpieces, even though it contains at least a couple of songs considered - instead - among his best works. Certainly, this work should be contextualized, released after the controversial venture of Kicking against the Pricks (an anthology of covers redone in the style of The Bad Seeds) and - as mentioned - a turning point towards an artistic evolution still far from perfect maturation. It makes one say, however, if only there were more records like this one today.