dont it make you feel so sad
dont the blood rush to yr feet
to think that everything you do today
tomorrow is obsolete
technology & women
& little children too
dont it make you feel blue
dont it make you feel blue
for more news from nowhere
There are so many lines you could cut from his beautiful kebab and place in a sad little pitta to give people a first taste of Nick Cave’s “oeuvre”.
I’m sure if you made it here, you’ll have OD’d on his work in the past. You’ve probably scribbled your favourite words inside notebooks, pasted them onto your old Tumblr or have one of them etched indefinitely across your limbs.
I made this playlist for you (ok, I sort of made it for myself too) with a few of my favourites of his catalogue. It begins with the most brutal but beautiful piece of music I ever did hear. And there are a few “deep cuts” slipped in for you too (that Pulp cover is so wonderfully-wonderfully silly).
In putting this together, I realised that so many of his starkest lines ride by on first few listens, such is his rich c̶o̶n̶v̶e̶y̶e̶r̶ ̶b̶e̶l̶t̶ river of song. The heavy waters of our minds are often murky with the detritus of life and humanity, making the beauty harder to detect. Sheets of magnificent poetry race alongside you but you’re too busy worrying about the grooves’ undertow and the waterfall’s edge. When there’s poise, however, it breaks you. Truly, sadly, deeply. Something briefly snap-cracks inside of you. The sudden judder of a lift battling gravity. The opposite of an epiphany, and yet, like the oxygen popping from your bones, something feels a little better afterwards.
Ever since I was an insomniac kid, I’ve always felt like there’s something, some truth, just in the corner of my perception. Something that’s far beyond religion or a paranoid delusion. Something that makes everything cohere. A meaning to the senseless madness, I guess. I’ve been plagued by those late-night awakenings about the universe that skid away just as they come into focus… There are glimpses of this elusive beast in the subtext of behavioural science, in the shadows of the monolithic anchors of civilisation that you find within ancient proverbs & philosophy, it’s possibly lurking in the background of comic books, it’s definitely lost somewhere within the warren of celestial-crystal spiritual ‘jumbo… and in the guttural howls of Nick Cave.
There’s perhaps a comfort in the eternal damnation that often emanates from Nick Cave. An existential moment of realisation that this feeling of shadows passing is the ‘same as it ever was’. The acceptance that the puzzle is the prize… just don’t tell anyone.
If you’re reading this and would like a weekly dose of melancholy, sign up:
If You Read One Thing…
As a little extra to this week’s email, here’s probably the best thing I’ll ever write. I’ve accepted that. In fact, reading it back, seven years later, I still don’t quite believe I wrote it. I remember feeling possessed writing it. A Nick Cave show really is something else.
A Must For Nick Cave Fans
If you’ve not yet discovered Nick Cave & The Bad Memes, prepare to lose an hour of your life and annoy your friends by sending them memes about ‘sad bastard music’. The Instagram account is the main place to get your existential-meme fix.
There’s also an 11,000 strong fan Facebook group which I may or may not regularly contribute to. Dave who runs the account is also a mental health activist, has just started a podcast to check out.
New Radio Show
Here is this month’s mellow but miserable Unhappy Hour radio show, available to stream for free on Mixcloud.
Unhappy Hour 3: Tracklisting
In Love With a Ghost - I Was Feeling Down, I Found a Nice Witch and We're Friends
Wye Oak - AEIOU
Phoebe Bridgers - I Know The End
Lucy Dacus - Night Shift
Skullcrusher - Trace
Kelsey Lu - I'm Not In Love
Lykke Li - Unchained Melody
James Holden - Blackpool Late Eighties
Arab Strap - The Turning of Our Bones
Jeniferever - A Ghost in the Corner of Your Eye
I Break Horses - I Live At Night - Live At Night Version
Smog - I Break Horses
Cat Power - Cross Bones Style
Shamir - Lived and Died Alone
The Ink Spots - I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire
Iggy Pop - We Are The People
Blood Orange - Charcoal Baby
Sky Ferreira - Everything Is Embarrassing
Carly Rae Jepsen - Warm Blood
Phoenix - Identical - From The Motion Picture "On The Rocks"
The Big Moon - Don't Think
Jenny O. - God Knows Why
Sparklehorse - More Yellow Birds
Jóhann Jóhannsson - Part 5/ The Sun's Gone Dim And The Sky's Turned Black