Nick Cave—From Her to Eternity

Nick Cave—From Her to Eternity (1984)

From Her to Eternity—No band had as many meaningless name changes as Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Nick Cave's original band was called "The Boys Next Door," which ran from 1973–78 when they mostly played covers. That name stuck up through the release of Door, Door (1979)–The Birthday Party (1980), after which they adopted "The Birthday Party" as their new name. In late 1983, the Birthday Party apparently broke up, though that's not true to what really happened. The only effective change in the band was the departure of guitarist Rowland S. Howard; core members Nick Cave and Mick Harvey remained, and the rest of the band went through no more dramatic changes than they did as the Birthday Party. At this time, they began going by the names "Nick Cave—Man or Myth?" (technically a solo act) and "Nick Cave and the Cavemen" before finally settling on "Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds." However, the resulting album from this period, From Her to Eternity, would be billed on the cover simply as the work of "Nick Cave."

In fairness, the name changes came with pointed shifts in style. Cave's raving, drug-fueled persona was toned down in favor of a more literary bent, signaled by a doomful cover of Leonard Cohen's poetic "Avalanche." The disquieting "Cabin Fever!" is a mad excursion through the mind of a tattooed, mutilated ship's captain. The dark threnody "Well of Misery" plays almost like a slave song. "From Her to Eternity," co-written by Anita Lane, is a claustrophobic account of a misguided tryst. Side B contains three songs recorded earlier in the band's formation: "Saint Huck" is a Delta blues gutted and turned inside-out, "Wings off Flies" is a blackly humorous soliloquy of twisted yearning, and the dirge "A Box for Black Paul" tells the tale of a man scorned upon his death with racial implications.

One might assume from their descriptions that From Her to Eternity is not much different than the work of the Birthday Party. The best way to describe it, really, is that there was logical evolution going on from Junkyard (1982) to Mutiny/The Bad Seed (1983) to From Her to Eternity. Junkyard still featured an erratic, outrageous edition of Cave and the Birthday Party; the Mutiny and Bad Seed EPs retained that surface style, but with tighter arrangements and less screaming, perhaps in part due to Rowland S. Howard—who was principal songwriter along with Cave—being forced out in favor of Blixa Bargeld of Einstürzende Neubauten. From Her to Eternity is equally steeped in lunacy, but with a greater emphasis on Cave's piano playing, suggestions of the American South (which would be further explored more explicitly by the band in coming years), and an overall roomier, live sound. As for its quality, Eternity is not the sort of record to listen to for blind pleasure. It's moody and psychologically oblique, and the arrangements and sound affects are almost wholly subordinate to the feelings associated with the lyrics. Coming from a different band, this set-up might be a recipe for overindulgence, but Eternity is just modest enough to carry weight.

More Nick Cave reviews by The Old Noise:

as The Boys Next Door/The Birthday Party:

Door, Door (1979)
The Birthday Party (1980)
Prayers on Fire (1981)

Junkyard (1982)

as Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds:

From Her to Eternity (1984)
The Firstborn Is Dead (1985)
Kicking Against the Pricks (1986)
Your Funeral... My Trial (1986)
Tender Prey (1988)
The Good Son (1990)
Henry's Dream (1992)
Live Seeds (1993)
Let Love In (1994)
Murder Ballads (1996)
The Boatman's Call (1997)
No More Shall We Part (2001)
Nocturama (2003)
Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (2004)
Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (2008)
Push the Sky Away (2013)
Skeleton Tree (2016)

as Grinderman:

Grinderman (2007)
Grinderman 2 (2010)

Leonard Cohen—Various Positions

Leonard Cohen—Various Positions

Various Positions—Leonard Cohen's albums all exist at roughly the same level of literacy, which is unsurprising given that he was already an established writer and poet by the time of his debut, Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967). There's not much to differentiate them on paper but for that the titles sometimes give away the overarching themes or morals (e.g. Songs of Love and Hate [1971]). They are more commonly defined by their production values. Cohen has gone on record saying he feels his debut was overproduced, and there are detractors when it comes to New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974) and Death of a Ladies Man (1977). The latter was augmented by Phil Spector and is probably Cohen's most controversial record, the claims there being legitimate. New Skin, on the other hand, was produced by John Lissauer, and is only so involved in comparison to Cohen's other albums.

Recent Songs (1979) was something of a return to the drawing board, sounding almost like a matured Songs from a Room (1969) with more tasteful arrangements. Cohen did very little professionally in the ensuing five years, but slowly compiled the writing that would turn into Various Positions. He reunited with Lissauer when it was time to record, who had gone on to other ventures after being Cohen's bandleader for a number of years in the '70s. By 1983, times had changed, and Cohen had turned to composing on a Casio keyboard, which formed the basis for the striking opener, "Dance Me to the End of Love." Its lyrics were inspired by the true tale that in concentration camps, captives "would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt." (Dave Thompson, 1000 Songs That Rock Your World). The sunset serenade "Coming Back to You" details the realization that a lost lover trumped the experiments that followed, while the funereal "The Law" is like a gangster's apology. "Night Comes On" offers a look into Cohen's vivid, archetypal dreams in triple meter.

The celebrated "Hallelujah" appears here in its original incarnation, which is sometimes said to be not even close to the best version. While it's true that subsequent performers brought out other strengths in the song, Cohen's original is unique for his charismatic baritone and the character of its chorus. However, the album's real gem is the forgotten "The Captain," which is smartly musical, funny, and literate all at once, owing as much to Lissauer's arrangement as it does to the poem, which Cohen had been performing live as a spoken-word piece. "Hunter's Lullaby" evokes the sentiment of a man searching for his destiny, told from a detached point of view. "Heart with No Companion" is a charming ode to restless souls. "If It Be Your Will" offers a glimpse into Cohen's torturous spirituality ("Let your mercy spill/On all these burning hearts in Hell") in the guise of a gentle paean.

It's easy to dismiss Various Positions as just another veteran artist's experiment with special effects. But it's possible that it was his strongest collection of songs ever, at least on some level—although the production sometimes sounds dated, there's not a bad piece of writing in the whole set, and it's more concise than many of Cohen's earlier efforts. For this reason, Various Positions should come to be considered a misjudged classic.

XTC—The Big Express

XTC—The Big Express

The Big Express—One might venture a guess that although Andy Partridge did not miss touring, he possibly missed the big sound of XTC's older records. Mummer (1983) was an insular studio jaunt, a far cry from the drum-heavy sounds of their previous three records, Drums and Wires (1979), Black Sea (1980), and English Settlement (1982). The Big Express, which is followed in sequence by the lighthearted 25 O'Clock (1985, under the pseudonym Dukes of Stratosphear), almost seems out of place today, not just because of its production but its theory of cohesion. In a 2008 interview (Andy discusses "The Everyday Story of Smalltown," Todd Bernhardt, chalkhills.org), Partridge recalled, "I think that at the time of The Big Express, part of me wanted to do an out-and-out concept album about Swindon—my take on the town, my life in the town, and the town's life itself," Swindon being where the principal members of XTC all grew up, including bygone drummer Terry Chambers.

With that in mind, it is worth noting that The Big Express is also the most Andy Partridge-dominated record in XTC's catalog, with only two of its 11 songs composed by bassist Colin Moulding, and somewhat slight ones at that. "Washaway," an additional song of his, was left off; for posterity's sake: Partridge has indicated more than once that the band voted for what went on the records by committee, and Moulding once said about his earlier composition "Ball and Chain," "It wasn't much of a song. I think I'd gone off the boil ... The least favourite of my contributions. I don't think I got it back until Skylarking." However, there is merit to his opener "Wake Up," whose lyrics of the unbearable grind of the rat race hit close to home. It progresses to a climax in which everything but the guitar cuts out and Moulding describes a recurring dream where bystanders watch apathetically as a man dies in the gutter: a simple diversion for the people who he urges to wake up and become more than just drones.

Partridge's punchy sea shanty "All You Pretty Girls" contains one of his best verses: "I think about your pale arms waving/When I see the caps upon the green/And the rocking roller-coaster ocean/Think about you every night when I'm fathoms asleep/And in my dreams/We are rocking in a similar motion." "Shake You Donkey Up" seems to admonish a wife-beater who got his just dessert. "Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her, Kiss Her" is the album's hidden gem, painting perfectly with its visual cues the hesitant awkwardness of romance. It was also amusingly chosen by a Japanese band to be their name, as if they waited to choose the most awkward title possible as inspiration. Forlorn apocalypse ballad "This World Over" imagines the worst outcome of the Cold War, wondering if humans will claim retroactively that "we did it in His name."

The chugging "The Everyday Story of Smalltown," the most explicit of the aforementioned odes to Swindon, is most memorable to outsiders for the power of its key change and fanciful onslaught of kazoos. "I Bought Myself a Liarbird," Partridge's second bird-themed song of the album and who knows how many overall, is about XTC's then-manager. "Reign of Blows" is a somewhat boring take on his once-per-album anti-violence, anti-hate, or anti-racism message. "You're the Wish You Are I Had" is a bouncy love-at-first-sight song (of the real kind and not the lust that Moulding described in "Love at First Sight") that might have been more effective if its words were not so convoluted. Moulding's mediocre "I Remember the Sun" effectively bronzes his childhood, which makes it seem to unwittingly contribute to Partridge's concept. The neurotic "Train Running Low on Soul Coal" sums up Partridge's helplessness and guilt over the band's new direction (because what early XTC album would sit well without one of his paranoid rave-ups?).

The Big Express can be difficult to listen to, mainly because the engineering was subpar. The heavy arrangements were not handled properly, muffling the messages of songs like "Reign of Blows" under a noticeable loss of dynamic range. However, where it hits, it hits hard, and "All You Pretty Girls" and "Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her, Kiss Her" rank as classics to go with a handful of others that solid or at least interesting. The same can be said of plenty other XTC albums held in higher esteem by the general audience.

More XTC reviews by The Old Noise:

White Music (1978)
Go 2 (1978)
Drums and Wires (1979)
Black Sea (1980)
English Settlement (1982)
Mummer (1983)
The Big Express (1984)
25 O'Clock (1985)
Skylarking (1986)
Psonic Psunspot (1987)
Oranges & Lemons (1989)
Nonsuch (1992)
Apple Venus Volume 1 (1999)
Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2) (2000)

Robyn Hitchcock—I Often Dream of Trains

Robyn Hitchcock—I Often Dream of Trains

I Often Dream of Trains—Although Black Snake Dîamond Röle (1981) and Groovy Decay (1982) were respectable beginning entries to his solo career, Robyn Hitchcock lacked a model record the caliber of Underwater Moonlight. It wasn't for lack of talent, of course, as Hitchcock was the principal songwriter of the Soft Boys, but having a band around him seemed to focus his music. The songs on Röle and Decay were sometimes labored or stiff, if principally strong, though the latter was perceived poorly and Hitchcock would fall into recession over the next couple years.

He reemerged in 1984 with I Often Dream of Trains, which was his first largely solo-performed and acoustic or piano-led album. He took the opportunity to explore new moods in his music. Whereas his prior work was a tense, warped new wave, Trains was subdued and moribund; he opens the album with a simple, pensive nocturne, simply titled "Nocturne (Prelude)." Hitchcock does retain his characteristic eccentricity, however, as evidenced by the creeping "Sometimes I Wish I Was a Pretty Girl," where he confides, "Sometimes I wish I was a pretty girl/So I could [inaudible] myself in the shower." On the conflicted "Cathedral," he struggles to understand another being with a hint of derision: "Like a toilet from outside/A cathedral from inside/There, behind your open face/Lies an awful lot of space."

"Uncorrected Personality Traits" runs through a litany of intriguing psychological pitfalls in under two minutes, commenting on how, as the first lines of the song put succinctly, "uncorrected personality traits that seem whimsical in a child may prove to be ugly in a fully grown adult." He also serves up the curious thought, "Even Marilyn Monroe was a man/But this tends to get overlooked/By our mother-fixated, overweight, sexist media," which is not as ludicrous as it initially sounds. "Sounds Great When You're Dead" is a somewhat lesser song where Hitchcock experiments with a particular arrangement, while the surrealist "Flavour of Night" echoes David Bowie's Diamond Dogs. "Ye Sleeping Nights of Jesus" highlights the futility of waiting for miracles; "This Could Be the Day" pays tribute to the Velvet Underground.

"Trams of Old London," an effectively immersive folk song, sees Hitchcock take his partner around London. "Furry Green Atom Bowl" is something like an alchemist's rendition of "Sixteen Tons." "Heart Full of Leaves," an instrumental, and "Autumn Is Your Last Chance," a haunting song with a lonely lyric, could have fit on an early Cure album. Title cut and high point "I Often Dream of Trains" wraps up the themes of autumn and longing as well as the romanticizing of trains before the album ends nearly the same way it began, with a slightly livelier "Nocturne (Demise)."

I Often Dream of Trains marked an artistic rebirth for Robyn Hitchcock, which is strange considering its status as something of an anomaly in his oeuvre. He recorded nothing quite like it across the rest of the decade, instead choosing to effectively reform the Soft Boys (minus Kimberley Rew as the Egyptians) and record more electric material. It is characteristic of Hitchcock as the folk singer he always wanted to be, and despite its radically different style from the rest of his '80s work, it is rightfully considered a career highlight: melodic, wryly humorous, and ardently performed.

U2—The Unforgettable Fire

U2—The Unforgettable Fire

The Unforgettable Fire—Following War (1983), U2 sought to expand their sound, which is always a smart thing to do. Few artists can replicate a formula with true creative success, and even those that can pull it off are often labeled one-trick ponies. After perfecting their drum-led, minor-key attack across three albums, U2 asked Brian Eno to produce The Unforgettable Fire (though Eno has claimed he contributed in a more abstract sense and that Daniel Lanois was responsible for the actual production). Though Eno and Lanois have been involved with most of U2's subsequent albums through 2015, the prospect of their collaboration was less evidently advantageous in 1984. Boy (1980), October (1981), and War were mostly intelligent records, but not particularly artful, and Eno was known at that time for more experimental ventures and his singular collaborations with David Bowie.

The Unforgettable Fire was recorded partially at Slane Castle in Slane, Co. Meath, Ireland, which allowed U2 to make use of the acoustics of its library and various other rooms, rather than Windmill Lane Studios where their first three albums were recorded. "A Sort of Homecoming" is nothing like U2 had recorded prior, benefiting from the roomier conditions, its impression best encapsulated by its lyric, "And your earth moves beneath/Your own dream landscape." The song's title is taken from a Paul Celan quote, so translated: "[Poems are] a kind of homecoming." The soaring "Pride (In the Name of Love)" directly references Martin Luther King, Jr., whose fate is compared with Christ's ("One man betrayed with a kiss") and casualties of war ("One man caught on a barbed wire fence ... One man washed on an empty beach"), who died, ironically, in the name of love. Bono sings of King, "They could not take your pride." The singer originally wrote the piece in reproach of U.S. president Ronald Reagan:

"It was originally meant as the sort of pride that won't back down, that wants to build nuclear arsenals, but that wasn't working. I remembered a wise old man who said to me, 'Don't try and fight darkness with light, just make the lights shine brighter.' I was giving Reagan too much importance. Then I thought, Martin Luther King, there's a man. We build the positive rather than fighting with the finger. In the end this slain preacher from Atlanta, that dark note, was the way I found the balance. So I was able to keep that song in an ecstatic place." —Bono, undated NME interview¹

"Wire" is reportedly a commentary on drugs and musically exhibits the transition from the frenzied attack of War. The title of the shining "The Unforgettable Fire" refers to a Chicago Peace Museum exhibit of artwork by atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima, Japan. The lyric "Your eyes as black as coal" probably refers to Bono's wife Ali; on the lovely "Promenade" he sings of his and her house in Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland. The instrumental "4th of July" refers not to the U.S. holiday but its date of recording, on which Eno recorded guitarist The Edge and bassist Adam Clayton outside their knowledge. "Bad" foreshadows The Joshua Tree (1987) and is about heroin addiction—or rather, it should be noted that Bono actually sings about the theory of heroin addiction, because "Wire" and "Bad" exude the quality of being written by someone who only knows the terrors of drug addiction from observance of it. The EP Wide Awake in America (1985), which features an extended live cut of "Bad," takes its name partially from one of the song's lyrics.

"Indian Summer Sky" is a fairly plain yet ambiguously compelling song that evokes Talking Heads' "Listening Wind," which would be an arcane comparison if not for Eno's production credit on that band's landmark record Remain in Light. The much-maligned and admittedly sophomoric "Elvis Presley and America" has an interesting push to its rhythm and effects that make it worth hearing. "MLK" is a humbler tribute to King, continuing U2's psalmic tradition in the vein of "40" from War.

There is a sense with The Unforgettable Fire that Bono's writing suffered from naivety, but time has favored the album in the sense that he has shown naivety to be an essential quality of his person. The album was a decidedly transitional work for U2 as a band, and as such it's not perfect, but it is impassioned and inspired, and the sound is unique.

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1 Courtesy of 33 Revolutions per Minute by Dorian Lynskey^↩