(no subject)

Lovely, lovely Halloween. MOst noted for feeling at ease, and having wonderful company -- it was persisently joyful in a complicated time, and I managed to say some stuff that I've been thinking about pretty relentlessly lately, and instead of making it all seem worse, I think Kerry is going to win.

So many of us, for whatever reason, say "there's this other world I'm comfortable in" and maybe that's fictions we prefer, or time periods that interest, or ways of behaving that aren't as common as we'd wish in our peer group, or aspirations long since abandoned.

There's this other world I'm comfortable in, and I've decided it's going to be right here.

Among other things, that's what spending time with friends is.

P.S. -- I'm so hooked on the Franz Ferdinand record (particularly In the Matinee) that I haven't even listened to the new Nick Cave yet. Today at work.

I knew it was going to be surreal...

There's a car going around my neighborhood with speakers on top, broadcasting messages about stopping American colonialism in Iraq and how we have to vote tomorrow.

That's all to the good, but it's strange.

new Nick Cave: Lyre of Orpheus / Abattoir Blues

Well, I finally cracked open the new Nick Cave today, and Oh My Heavens....

I've been listening to Nick Cave for what is rapidly approaching two decades now. I've grown up listening to his music, my interest in it being a natural outgrowth I think of growing up with parents who were really into country and bluegrass music. At any rate, I've seen Nick Cave in concert probably dozens of times and have a lot of really key moments in my life that connect back there in some way or other (and good friends and longtime readers know the concert in DC story).

There are a lot of reasons I appreciate Nick Cave -- the sound, and the incredibly detailed self-contained world that his albums seem to be set in. Some albums grab me more than others, but it would make more sense for me to list the ones I hardly ever listen to as opposed to the ones I adore.

At any rate, the new one, which is a double set, just blows anything he's done before out of the water. Sure, The Ship Song will always be my favourite love song ever, and his cover of In the Ghetto is legendary, and Murder Ballads was a hoot, and dude he had a guy in his band named Blixa (yay Blixa! He's from Einstruzende Neubauten for anyone who cares and likes noise), blah blah blah.

This new stuff has turned some sort of corner though. Some of it, as has been happening on the last couple of discs is very hopeful and sweet -- something he does remarkably well. But what's interesting about this album is how little rage it contains. Sure, there are still murders, hateful women, predatory homosexuals, and vengeful gods (Nick Cave is a weird guy, but much smarter about all these things than someone who hasn't listened to his stuff could really imagine, also it's all about his weird little alternate world), but it almost slips by you on this album, and then you listen to it a second time, and catch the narrative and it's just shocking.

Special points for his very disturbing retelling of that whole Orpheus business, an oddly subtle and mournful song about prostitution, and a fairytale about an ape that is so disturbing in its shaky sound and imagery I can't listen to it without getting chills. And all of this is interspersed with some really beautiful, hopeful, gospel-inspired stuff, and a lot of very sexy, very funky rhythms.

For all the weird, and the disturbing and the talking animals and drunken men and so forth and so forth, this record feels really whole and healing, in a way I haven't quite figured out yet. But if you're a fan, you've got to get this one, and if you're not, but you've always been curious, it's incredibly accessible and easily argued that it's his best. Certainly, there isn't a throwaway track on it.

But really, I am warning you about the song with the ape and the snake.