Shortly after the single's release I heard about the forthcoming album that would be made up entirely of songs about death and murder. Being a 19 year old fellow, I was quite morbidly curious about this idea. Having been vaguely familiar with Cave's work, I certainly didn't expect the Tell Laura I Love Her and Leader Of The Pack style of death anthem.
The only Cave songs I really knew back then were The Ship Song and Do You Love Me? as they had been included on the first two Triple J Hottest 100 CDs. I'd seen snippets of clips of his time in The Birthday Party and some earlier clips with the Bad Seeds, but it didn't really blow my skirt up. But there something about Cave that was enticing to me. That deep voice, that menacing form and that dark, forbidding quality.
Anyway, long story short, I bought Murder Ballads when it came out, and it was my first Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album. As I listen to it now, my impressions of it are still pretty quite similar to how I felt nineteen years ago. The concept is fantastic, and the moods created on all the tracks are suitably eerie. However, some of the songs just aren't engaging. I think the weakest tracks are the ones that don't present their story very clearly, namely Lovely Creature, Crow Jane and The Kindness Of Strangers. So, I find it a little hit-and-miss, pardon the pun.
When they DO get it right though, it's downright unsettling. I think the album opener, Song Of Joy, does the best job of giving you chills, and Cave's performance is suitably unhinged. You feel as though he's talking directly to you through the speakers and the line between the song's narrator and murderer are nicely blurred.
The upbeat tempo and almost cartoon-like imagery of The Curse Of Millhaven is a big highlight for me too, and possibly my favourite track on the album. The repeated "La la la la/La la la lie" by the specially assembled group of backing vocalists (dubbed the Moron Tabernacle Choir) adds a fantastical element as well.
Although it's a long listen at fourteen and a half minutes, O'Malley's Bar is great too, and probably the most graphic track, detailing the massacre of the patrons and staff at a tavern. Again, it's Cave's performance that lifts these songs out of the reach of the average singer because of his gothic theatricality. The Bad Seeds know how to create a sonic landscape that he can lay the words onto, and I couldn't think of another group to tackle such a concept. I have read in my travels this week, that the band tailored this album around O'Malley's Bar, because it was the only way the song could exist. I believe that to be true.
I love that Murder Ballads closes with Dylan's dirge-like Death Is Not The End, and that the guest vocalists and musicians contribute vocals to each verse. It strikes me as a whimsical epilogue that washes away the savagery of the previous tracks, and reminds you that it was all a musical dream.
Getting back to why this LP is important to me, if I had not taken the plunge and bought it, I doubt I would have delved more into Cave's work. Aside from 2003's Nocturama, I have all the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds albums from Murder Ballads to 2013's excellent Push The Sky Away. I also have The Best Of compilation that was released in 1998. I am not much of a fan of their eighties material, but I love Deanna. I much prefer the live renditions of The Mercy Seat and From Her To Eternity that Cave performed in Fremantle last November too. I find tracks like Tupelo and The Carny quite menacing and difficult to enjoy.
So, while I don't love Murder Ballads to death (badoom-tish!), I am grateful for its exist and the path it slowly lead me down. Without it, I may not have Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus in my favourite albums of all time list.
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