Nick Cave and Warren Ellis
The Assassination of Jesse James

THE REVIEW

What is the epic sound?

It's difficult to explain in words a concept that is purely epidermic, that is felt on the skin. If we really had to try to translate into words and explain what is meant by epic sound, well, I would put Wagner aside for now and think of music where the concept of time is suspended. I would think of a sound in which time does not enter, a sound that makes everything it touches immortal. I think of a sound where the mind is still and rationality does not perceive, but it is the soul that indulges. I would think of this splendid work by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. A soundtrack of a very melancholic film.

I don't like to use the term masterpiece for popular music in general ("I wouldn't want to do a disservice to Mozart or Bach"), but this work is truly noteworthy. Let's take the second track, the eponymous "Song for Jesse". Close your eyes, listener, and tell me in which world you find yourself. Let the music caress you, let the gentle sweetness of this timeless melody shake you. Forget the daily worries, forget the paranoias, forget everything. You are in another dimension: there is something childlike in this sound, which indulges and soothes. Most of these tracks have an epic-melancholic flavor, and by melancholic here we don't mean the taste of something lost, but rather a state of sweetness full of indulgence of the soul.

Is it possible that filthy Nick produced such music? The decadent and lascivious one from "From her to eternity"? Well… the human soul is truly great and varied, it's a sort of plasticine capable of molding itself at will… let all the dogmatists and the professors of musical party ideologies go fry themselves.