I took me a while to get into Nick Cave. While I always liked the Birthday Party, I could never really bring myself to pick up a Cave album, even as various friends were giving him rave reviews.
Then one cool October Night in 1994 I was in Olson's Books near my old house in DC. It was a gloomy, decaying -leaf type day and I was buying Jim Thompson's Pop 1280. Like Cave, Thompson was an artist that I had long resisted despite (or maybe because of) gushing reviews.
Settling in at home, alone, I rolled a cig, dimmed the lights, cracked the Thompson book, and started blasting Let Love In...
Cave's lyric's and Thompson's lyricism blended together like twin smokes from a cigarette and a cigar. The underbelly of the American South, with its crooked men, lusty women, causal yet premeditated murder, and rough sex becomes a mythic tableu that gives both Cave and Thompson a pallete of moods and experiences that draw close to the filthy heart inside all of us. Both men take the deep blackness of greed, misery, and hatred and use them as characteristics of both buffoons and sly foxes.
The ambiguity that is essential to both comes from the fact that a judement is never made on one side or the other-- even though the most likeable character (Cave's Stagger Lee, Thompson's Sherrif) usually dies as a result of his conniving, there is no pretense at moral posturing-- which is part of what makes Cave's and Thompson's work so thoroughly enjoyable.
To see Cave in concert was to get rid of all the literary allusions and just watch the man play the crowd. Which he does with surprising ease and confidence. Cave comes on stage with a minimum of pretense, just a singer who know's he's the man and that he's about to rock the house, cabaret style.
It was a powerful concert, with just the right vocal touches, guitar crescendos, drum wallops, and mood lighting. During the best number, Red Right Hand, Nick took center stage and was bathed in demonic red light, as he reeled off the story of the Devil. The crowd (consisting of goths, 30something couples, and surprisingly few Cave impersonators) went nuts, getting goosed by the drum-booms that start the chorus, and quietly focusing on Cave during the slower parts as he writhed in his red light.
Cave's night of noir was electric, from the older songs to the new. In one moment that exposed the black comedy behind his black heart, Nick had Blixa Bargfeld sang the Kylie Minogue part of "Where the Wild Roses Grow." The song lost some of its beauty but little of its power, even as Cave and Blixa exchanged mushy expressions...
After the ill-advised lollapalooza gig, Nick seems to be getting more comfortable with toruing in the states. The next time I want to see him in a small cafe while the French film version of Jim Thompson's Pop 1280, Coup de Torchon, plays on a projection in the rear. Then I will have fully lived the international noir lifestyle.
