18. Your Funeral... My Trial

Your Funeral... My Trial by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nick Cave is a skilled storyteller. While this is a fairly old album, these songs pour forth emotion through the intonations of his voice and also the fantastic imagery of his lyrics. "The Carny" is a most unusual, incredibly jarring waltz and story. There's something horrific about it, conjuring up decay and hopelessness with lyrics like:

And it was the dwarves that were given the task of digging the ditch
And laying the nag's carcass in the ground
While boss Bellini waved his smoking pistol 'round
saying "The nag was dead meat"
"We can't afford to carry dead weight"

"Sad Waters" gets me every time. It doesn't initially sound like a sad song, but listening to the lyrics and the ghost of his own voice trailing behind that lull in the dominant one, there's something like mourning in it that is poignantly beautiful.

This album has music that matches it's lyrical content, and I find it to be poetry in that sense. I feel like Nick Cave is one of those artists that, though he has already been around for a long time, will continue to do so for years to come.



Track listing:

1. Sad Waters
2. The Carny
3. Your Funeral... My Trial
4. Stranger Than Kindness
5. Jack's Shadow
6. Hard On for Love
7. She Fell Away
8. Long Time Man
9. Scum

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Who are Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds?