#it's technically one

it would be meticulous to attempt to string together all the wildly fascinating aspects of nick cave's career that have drawn me in relentlessly from my first listen of his voice several years ago. there isn't much to be said about everything, about the sound or about the style, as mick harvey once put it "if they [a band] sounds like the birthday party, then they've missed the point. it was about our attitude to what we were making that mattered." and in many ways this is true. if you are solely concerned with the way nick's bandmates and him sound, you're bound to be lost on them somewhere, probably soon. the large stretch of many graves and faces isn't one that you should take a critical eye to, but instead a terribly honest and emotionally nude one. his work is something to be taken with the heart, listened to with care, and considered deeply in the same way you'd take an old story you enjoyed as a child. with musings to yourself on how the tale impacted you, moved you, and perhaps shaped you, as many of nick's have me. while harvey stayed sober during most of his career with nick, the personal experience one has with him as a listener is certainly far from sobering. the beginnings of his career share inklings of the disruptive chaos he had endured and accumulated with the birthday party, and a partial sense of misunderstanding a vocal range. iv always been a somewhat regrettable listener of the boys next doors' cover of 'these boots were made for walking' as nick's stagnant range there is terribly upsetting, as almost immediately after his voice was put on full display with rowland s. howard's immaculate 'shivers.' for me, there are still many blank spaces in my mind in regards to nick's early efforts with the bad seeds due a 'just in case' mentality. in the event record releases become sparse, and i find myself craving something new, i would like to have unfamiliar territory to dive into even if it is thirty plus years old. just in case. however, the first album to really grab my attention is his 1986 album 'your funeral ... my trail,' which is an expanse of loneliness and tales of death and abandonment. as the poor horse sorrow dies another man tears his shadow up in strips, while another rejects the soft touch of a hand for the strike of insults. the album incapsulates a lot of what makes his work for me. vivid lyrical storytelling accompanied by an often uncoordinated sounding yet immersive musical experience, the way he writes flows very well with the music, creating a sense of movement on this record that is fascinating. on tracks such as 'stranger than kindness,' the frantic hum of the guitar creates an anxious feeling that comes with self hating isolation. the subtle backing vocals of german industrial hero blixa bargeld, echoing nick's voice in a whisper so quiet you almost don't notice it, make for an effect similar to a hollow man's thoughts bounding off the land surrounding him and coming back for the mind they came from. it's this harmony of imagery and sound that form the undeniable spectacle that is 'your funeral, my trial'. it is found in most tracks on the album yet there is a particular sense of subversiveness that is found in the song 'sad waters,' the first on the american release which pays perfect respect to its title in the manner in which the bass and sliding lyrics take one deep into the waters of a lake. here bargeld echoes nick as well, as he never seemed to quite back or support nick in his vocal work, more so trail his in a shadow-like way. the song's constant state of ingenious movement takes you across the shallows to meet mary, one of nick's many ghostly figures, as she carries with her the romanticism of waters shadowed by the overcasting trees and a love so dizzying it leaves you feeling drunken and perhaps already exhausted. in fact, almost every song on the record feels as though you've just watched a two hour long foreign film (namely perhaps wim wenders' 'wings of desire,' in which 'your funeral my trial' soundtracks) and are ready to lay your head to rest. but much to an initial panic, the movie starts again, and you are sifting through shards of west berlin and distant circuses to find an end to a mess you didn't intend to get yourself into. however, though it throws you for many loops and is as tremulous as an impending falling skyscraper, pieces of it stick with you emotionally for a long time afterwards. its characters and landscapes remaining in your consciousness, and you find yourself also wishing you'd done a better job at burying sorrow. horse corpses do stink.