Si dice che al tempo dei Birthday Party, avesse scritto in metropolitana una lettera alla ragazza, usando come penna una siringa e come inchiostro il proprio sangue. E sulla copertina di quest’album, Cave sembra un vampiro. Pallido, emaciato, un’ideale controfigura per Klaus Kinski.
Lontanissimo dal cantautore romantico di “Foi na cruz”, o da quello addirittura melenso di “Into my arms” Nick Cave ha infatti addolcito nel tempo i toni della sua opera, avvicinandosi progressivamente ad una concezione cantautorale più tradizionale. Ma sul primo album con i Bad Seeds è più che mai la voce dell’ossessione, senza quel clima quasi goliardico che rendeva i dischi dei Birthday Party una provocazione, per quanto estrema.
Qui aleggia un clima più serio e maturo, gli arrangiamenti cupi ed espressionisti sono calibrati per creare una cruda atmosfera da thriller, tra momenti di suspence ed esplosioni violentissime: - Voglio parlarvi di una ragazza - annuncia il cantante nella title track, uno dei momenti più alti di tutto il repertorio dell’australiano, che in un crescendo apocalittico imbastisce al piano una storia angosciata come certi racconti di Edgar Allan Poe, in una tensione da cardiopalma tra rumori industriali sempre più stordenti: così quando urla “Tell me why” con furia inumana sembra di guardare dritto negli occhi un serial killer un attimo prima di essere uccisi. L'amore come pulsante desiderio, come torbida ossessione.
È un disco nerissimo, allucinato, che riesce a sposare il gotico al blues più malato e strisciante, come nella lunga e lugubre ballata notturna “Box for black Paul” per piano e slide o nell’altrettanto macabra “Saint Huck”, nelle quali Cave emerge per le sue eccezionali doti di interprete, degno del più invasato Carmelo Bene. Le sue capacità attoriali sono ancora in evidenza quando trasforma una tenue ballata come “Avalanche” di Leonard Cohen in un esercizio subdolo e velenoso di recitazione, o nel delirio parossistico di “Cabin Fever”, novello capitano Achab alla deriva sull’oceano della follia, o ancora nel blues delle galere “Well of misery”, che procede seguendo lentamente un’armonica sbilenca a ritmo di frustate.
Su tutti i brani il canto è debordante, di ferocia e intensità psicotiche. Si respira dall’inizio alla fine un’atmosfera estremamente degradata e malsana, ottenuta senza ricorrere neppure una volta alla distorsione delle chitarre.
Ma la letterarietà dei testi e l’elegante e paradossale austerità dell’accompagnamento dei Bad Seeds, tradiscono in parte l’assunto: i temi del disco sembrano essere la violenza e la paranoia, visti però in una prospettiva forse troppo colta ed estetizzante rispetto ad esempio alle prime terrificanti opere degli Swans di Michael Gira, personaggio per molti versi simile a Cave. Nonostante questo, quello che rimane è comunque uno dei principali ed originali dischi di blues degli ultimi decenni, e l’inquietante biglietto da visita di uno dei più importanti cantautori moderni.
Elenco tracce testi e video
01 Avalanche (05:11)
I stepped into an avalanche
It covered up my soul
When I am not this hunchback that you see
I sleep beneath the golden hill
You who wish to conquer pain
You must learn to serve me well
You strike my side by accident
As you go down to your goal
This cripple here that you clothe and feed
Is neither starved nor cold
He does not ask for your company
Not at the centre, the centre of the world
I who am on a pedestal
You did not raise me there
Your laws do not compel me now
To kneel grotesque and bare
For I myself am the pedestal
For this ugly hump at which you stare
You who wish to conquer pain
You must learn what makes me kind
The crumbs of love that you offer me
Are the crumbs I've left behind
Your pain is no credential here
It's just a shadow of my wound
I have begun to ask for you
I who have no greed
I have begun to long for you
I who have no need
You say you've gone away from me
But I can feel you when you breathe
Do not dress in those rags for me
I know you are not poor
And do not love me quite so fiercely now
When you know that you are not sure
It is your turn, my beloved one
It is your flesh that I wear
02 Cabin Fever! (06:12)
The Captain's fore-arm like bunched-up rope
with A-N-I-T-A wrigglin' free on a skull'n'dagger
and a portrait of Christ, nailed to an anchor
etched into his upper...
O o o' Cabin Fever!
O o o' Cabin Fever!
Slams his fucken tin-dish down
Our Captain, takes time to crush
Some Bloo-Bottles glowin in his gruel
with a lump in his throat, and lumpy mush
Thumbing a scrapbook stuck up with clag
and a morbid lump of Love in his flags.
Done is the Missing, now all that remain
Is to sail forever, upon the stain
Cabin Fever! O o o' Cabin Fever!
The captain's free-hand is a cleaver
which he fashions his beard, n' he rations his jerkey!
and carves his peg outa the finest mahagony!
Or was it Ebony? etc...
Tallies up his loneliness, notch by notch
For the sea offers nuthin to hold or touch
Notch by notch, winter by winter
Notch x notch, winter x winter
Now his leg is whittled, right down to a splinter
O o Cabin Fever! O o o Cabin Fever!
O the rollin sea still rollin on!
She's everywhere! now that she's gone! Gone! Gone!
O Cabin Fever! O Cabin Fever!
Welcome to his table, Beloved-Unconscious
Raisin her host of hair from her crooks
and strugglin to summony one of her looks!
His arm now like coiled s-s-s-snakes
Whips all the bottles that he's drunken,
like crystal - skittles about the cabin,
of a ship they'd been sailing
Five years sunken... etc...
03 Well of Misery (05:25)
Along crags and sunless cracks I go
Up rib of rock, donw spine of stone
I dare not slumber where the night winds whistle
Lest her creeping-soul clutch this heart of thistle
O the same God that abandon'd her
Has in turn abandon'd me
And softenin' the turf with my tears
I dug a Well of Misery
And, in that Well of Misery
Hangs a bucket fulla Sorrow
It swings slow an' achin' like a bell
Its toll is dead and hollow
Down that well lies the long-lost dress
of my lil floatin girl
That muffles a tear that you let fall
All down that Well of Misery
Put ya shoulder to the handle, if ya dare
and hoist that bucket, hither
Lord, crank'n'hoist'n'hoist'n'crank
Till ya muscles waste'n'wither
O the same God that abandon'd her
Has in turn abandon'd me
Deep in the Desert of Despair
I wait at the Well of Misery
04 From Her to Eternity (05:36)
Ah wanna tell ya 'bout a girl
You know, she lives in room 29
Why... Why... that's the one right up top a mine
Ah start to cry, Ah start to cry
O Ah hear her walkin'
Walkin' barefoot cross the floor-boards
All thru this lonesome night
Ah hear her crying too.
Hot-tears come splashin on down
Leaking thru the cracks,
Down upon my face, Ah catch'em in my mouth!
Ah catch'em in my mouth!
Ah catch'em in my mouth!
Walk'n'cry Walk'n'cry-y!!!
From her to eternity!
From her to eternity!
From her to eternity!
Ah read her diary on her sheets
Scrutinizin' every lil bit of dirt
Tore out a page'n'stufft it inside my shirt
Fled outa the window,
And shinning it down the vine
Outa her night-mare, and back into mine
Mine! O Mine!
From her to eternity!
From her to eternity!
From her to eternity!
Cry! Cry! CRY!
She's wearing them bloo-stockens, ah bet!
and standin' like this with my ear to the ceiling
Listen, Ah know it must sound absurd
but Ah can hear the most melancholy sound
Ah ever heard!
Walk'n'cry! Kneel'n'cry-y!
From her to eternity!
From her to eternity!
O tell me why? O tell me why?
Oh Why? Why? Why?
O tell me why and don't tell me a lie!
Why the ceiling still shakes? Shakes! Shakes! Shakes!
Why the fixtures turn to serpents and snakes?
This desire to possess her is a wound
and its naggin at me like a shrew
but, Ah know, that to possess her
Is, therefore, not to desire her.
O o o then ya know, that lil girl would just have to go!
Go! Go-o-o! From her to eternity!
From her to eternity! [Repeat]
05 Saint Huck (07:22)
Born of the river,
Born of its ever-changing, never-changing murky water
Oh riverboat just rollin' along through the great great greasy city Huck standing like a Saint, upon its deck
If ya wanna catch a Saint,
then bait ya hook, let's take a walk...
'O come to me!, O come to me!' is what the dirty city
say to Huck... HUCK
woah-woah, woah woah!
woah-woah, woah woah!
Saint Huck! Huck!
Straight in the arms of the city goes Huck,
down the beckonin' streets of op-po-tunity
whistling his favorite river-song...
And a bad-blind nigger at the piano
Buts a sinister blooo lilt into that sing-a-long
Huck senses somthing's wrong!
Sirens wail in the city,
and lil-Ulysses turn to putty
and Ol Man River's got a bone to pick!
and our boy's hardly got a bone to suck!
He go, woah-woah, woah woah!
woah-woah, woah woah!
Saint Huck! Huck!
The mo-o-o-on, its huge cycloptic eye
watches the city streets contract
twist and cripple and crack.
Saint Huck goes on a dog's-leg now
Saint Huck goes on a dog's-leg now
You know the story!
Ya wake up one morning and you find you're a thug
blowing smoke rings in some dive
Ya fingers hot and itchin, ya cracking ya knuckles
Ya bull neck bristling...
Still Huck he ventures on whistling,
and Death reckons Huckleberry's time is up,
O woah woah woah!
Saint Huck!
O woah woah woah!
Saint Huck! Huck!
Yonder go Huck, minus pocket-watch an' wallet gone
Skin shrink-wraps his skeleton
No wonder he gets thinner, what with his cold'n'skinny dinners!
Saint Huck-a-Saint Elvis, Saint Huck-a-Saint Elvis
O you recall the song ya used to sing-a-long
Shifting the river-trade on that ol' steamer
Life is but a dream!
But ya traded in the Mighty ol' man River
for the Dirty ol' Man Latrine!
The brothel shift
The hustle'n'the bustle and the green-backs rustle
And all the sexy-cash
And the randy-cars
And the two dollar fucks
O o o ya outa luck, ya outa luck
Woah-woah-woah-woah
Saint Huck! Huck!
This is the track of deception
leads to the heart of despair
Huck whistles like he just don't care
but in the pocket of the jacket is a chamber
Lead pellets sleeps in there
Wake Up!
Now Huck whistles and he kneels
and he lays down there
See ya huck, good luck
A smoke ring hovers above his head
And the rats and the dogs and the men all come
and put a bullet through his eye
and the drip and the drip and the drip of the Mississippi cryin' And Saint Huck hears his own Mississippi just rollin' by him Woah-woah-woah-woah
Woah-woah-woah-woah
Saint Huck! Saint Huck! Saint Huck!
Woah-woah-woah-woah
Woah-woah-woah-woah
Saint Huck! Saint Huck! Saint Huck!
Woah-woah-woah-woah
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Altre recensioni
Di azzo
Febbre, è la prima parola che mi viene in mente ogni volta che ascolto questo disco.
Nick Cave, per alcuni anni, quand’era ammalato, è stato uno dei pochi veri artisti della canzone.
Di CosmicJocker
Nick usa i suoi bisturi per squarciarsi il ventre e mostrarci le sue budella che divora davanti a noi.
Spaventose urla di streghe legate ad un palo e bruciate a fuoco lento nella pira purificatrice della Santa Inquisizione.
