Released in 1986, Your Funeral, My Trial was Nick Cave's fourth album, it has a slightly different style to his previous releases and is the album that won the most people over and garnered interest in the singer/songwriter and his Bad Seeds.
From the opening notes it is clear that the album isn't going to be a happy one, however it's not all doom and gloom, the album goes through several phases, beginning in a solemn mood with "Your Funeral, My Trial" and "Stranger Than Kindness", moving to Nick's metaphorical prose in "Jack's Shadow" to the grinding, horrific and disturbing "The Carny", followed by three songs where the main subject is female: "She Fell Away", "Hard On For Love" and "Sad Waters" then the album ends with a story of murder in "Long Time Man".
"Your Funeral, My Trial" opens with a sparse arrangement led by Cave's piano and vocals, setting the tone for the rest of the album, the opening lyric is: "I am a crooked man, and I've walked a crooked mile" a feeling of self-loathing hovers over this track and Nick seems sad and withdrawn, feeling every bit of what he sings.
The atmospheric "Stranger Than Kindness" follows, with U2-esque guitar lines fading in announcing the track, the rhythm section working tightly together with a marching snare and prominent deep bass, build around repetition the song doesn't change much until the coda in which Cave croons: "I'm a stranger... To kindness."
The song fades out in a suitable manner.
"Jack's Shadow" combines country/blues guitar chops with a throbbing, galloping bassline aswell as industrial sound effects, Nick sings in the crazed manner of a man desperate to get rid of his burden, his 'shadow', only to regret it, after all, you have to live with your shadow, if you want to live in the light, lest ye be constrained in the darkness.
The longest track on the album "The Carny" is a tour-de-force in which a fairground type motif is taken, made into a horror soundtrack and pounded into your head, Cave's story telling is at its peak in this track, featuring the characters of "Carny" and a horse named "Sorrow" and the boss "Bellini".
The song "She Fell Away" is seemingly a story of a man whom is left by his lover, with lyrics like: "Seems impossible to me now, but once the road lay open like a girl." Part of the the narrators torment is that she fell: "To better days" a syncopated piano riff is the calling card of this track and a single screaming guitar note.
"Hard On For Love" has potential to seem like a standard rock song, which, in Nick Cave's case, would be a bad thing, but as soon as flashes of white noise begin punctuating the track, all seems promising, the song is rife in sexual imagery, for example "Milk and blood" and "It is for she that the cherry bleeds" The song has the best vocal performance on the album, as the songs power mounts with Cave screaming and repeating "Her breasts rise and fall."
"Sad Waters" maybe the weakest track on the album, lyrically it is brilliant, musically it is no more interesting than any ballad in another artist's repetoire, there are some religious references in the lyrics, which gives this track some depth than it, at first, seems to have.
"Long Time Man" marks Cave's return to his story-telling narrative style of singing, this time the story of a man who kills his wife and is sent to prison, giving the title a double-meaning, the long time man in the relationship and the long time man in jail, whilst lyrically interesting, the song suffers, from the worst vocal performance on the album.
Overall, the album is very good, some of the tracks have bad points which do detract from the atmosphere of the record, whilst I'm fond of Nick Cave's style of songwriting, some people may find his songs long and drawn-out, and are more interested in the music being catchy rather than actually listening to what Cave has to say. It's a demanding listen, even if it doesn't at first seem it, most definitely not background noise, this is an album you need to focus on, soak it in, interpret the stories.
7/10
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