Grab the Baby, the River's Rising

Its only mid-October. Today in this high-altitude hamlet in the Rockies an icy wind is rushing down off the snowy peaks to the west and bending trees and humans to its will. What golden aspen leaves that are left are plucked from their branches and sent skittering past oblivious elk stooped at chewing the grass in my yard. I guess we skipped fall this year. Already we've had a significant snowfall reshaping the mountain world into white for a few days. We've had five and six day stretches of cold weather, with leaden skies and fog that settles into the hems in the landscape. The word 'blustery' was coined for days such as these. And what can I say? My mood is like a chameleon that molds itself to fit the seasons. I can't complain. It was a good summer. A nice stint down in Santa Fe, then back here fly fishing the stream near my house, hiking deep into the mountains with my Weim, and lots of reading and writing. My spirits were up and the soundtrack to my soul, to my days and my moods, was all circa-1966 Brian Wilson, with layered harmonies provided by his spiritual progeny... Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear, even some Of Montreal. I was feeling good.

This morning as I sat looking at the 12- and 13,000 foot peaks in the distance going from ashen to lavender, storm clouds started building in charcoal shelves above the peaks. The underbellies of the clouds were catching the morning light and turning crimson. 'Red sky at morn/ sailors to warn.' Then the clouds sank and swallowed the beautiful vista. Not a mountain in sight. I gave in with a sigh and eyed the powder made from crushed prozac and celexa that I had scraped into a thin trail of dust on the cover of A Fan's Notes. I grabbed a twenty and started rolling it into a tight cylinder. Then I went over to my iPod and click-a-clicked down to the Ns and put on some Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

To be clear: we are talking about Cave's early work here. Which is in no way a judgement about his later and latest work. But in his early, post-Birthday Part songs, you find a man that is walking a dark path, but a path that is rich, evocative and beautiful while at the same time suffused with an epic strangeness and not a little evil. His songs, and the people that inhabit them, tread in a world of shadows, murder and sorrow. Mr. Cave hails from Australia, but you sense the spirit of Appalachia here. It is clear that he has done his time in the South, whether literally exploring the region or spiritually delving into the songs of the great bluesmen and country singers. The real country singers, not the plastic, gift-wrapped and palatable country singers that make pop songs with an occasional twang of slide guitar thrown in. He seems to revere the musical territory shown the light of day by the Blind Lemon Jeffersons, Buell Kazees, Leadbellys, Blind Willie Johnsons and Johnny Cashes of the world. To name only a few. Songs of murdered lovers, of loss, of prisons real and of the soul, of jealousy. In these spare, seemingly simple tunes, you can almost picture Nick Cave sitting at the fire with Culla Holme and the three bearded men that have cut a wide swath of mindless death across the South in Outer Dark. Or sitting at the edge of the woods, watching intently and taking notes, as necrophiliac Lester Ballard adds another unfortunate lady to his collection.

If we lived in a former age without all the evidence provided by media and technology, interviews and archives, I would think Nick Cave and Cormac McCarthy were one and the same man. As it is I see them as close kin. Blood brothers using different mediums (though Cave is a gifted prose stylist, and his screenplay for The Proposition echoes McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian') in an attempt to understand and create this strange world through words, both written and sung. They conjure stories from the depths of mankind's heart. Like the Aborigines in Chatwin's 'The Songlines', they sing/write the world into existence. Their territory seems to be an amalgamation of two lands: the green spine of the Appalachian mountains running through West Virginia, Tennessee and beyond, but with foothills and hinterlands of red Australian dust. Cave's songs could very well provide the soundtrack to the lives of John Wesley Ratner, Ballard and Cornelius Suttree. Judge Holden seems to be a character sung to life, straight from one of Mr. Cave's songs.

The world of these songs is replete with themes from the Old Testament. Vengeance, murder, loss, rage, rising waters - they are all here. Moses and Noah even pop up as characters - along with dwarfs, a dog-boy, a dead horses and circling crows - in the frightening, droning, cacophonous song 'The Carny'. He takes dark song and makes them darker, as with the excellent cover of 'Hey Joe'. From his prison cell, a man laments his wife laying in a pool of blood on the floor, in a cover of Tim Rose's 'Long Time Man'. Fittingly, before giving up the ghost, she stares up at her lover/killer with blue eyes and says, "baby... I love you", and then is gone. Like a quality actor, Cave's vocal delivery is impeccable. It isn't a question of Cave having a 'good' voice or not. He knows just how to use his voice. He softens it in the right places, wails at times, or evokes desperation in others. Listen to 'Stranger Than Kindness' and you will swear the ghost of Ian Curtis (on Joy Division's 'Transmission') has possessed him. And while the subject matter of these songs could be considered bleak and depressing, listening to these early Cave albums I am exhilarated, awed and taken to a higher place by his art.

But enough of my talk. The songs speak for themselves. As the cold weather sets in, go back and listen to them. The book of Genesis, Heart of Darkness and the trials of Job, as put to music and reinterpreted by Nick Cave. And as a closing note, I recently learned that Nick Cave has written the musical score for none other than the film version of Cormac McCarthy's bleak, post-apocalyptic novel, 'The Road'. How fitting.