Music Arcades: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Your Funeral, My Trial

I think this must have been the first Nick Cave album I bought, during my first term in Sheffield, late 1986, if memory can be trusted. Still in the early days of the CD market, when a CD version might be hard to find, so I got this double vinyl copy: two songs on each side, playing at 45 rpm. Increasingly I feel that, psychologically, a 'side', whatever format, should be between 15 and 25 minutes long — but these sides are less than 11 minutes long (on average), which is a bit of a nuisance.

I wasn't that impressed with the album at the time, and I've still got my reservations, mainly with the lyrics. Hindsight tells us that Cave has, like Tom Waits, chosen his canvas and stuck pretty doggedly to fleshing it out. But some of the stuff on this album feels like menace-by-numbers. I think it didn't help that I'd just read something my William Burroughs about a carny, so Cave's song on the same theme felt derivative.

But the Bad Seeds are on good form, as ever, and the songs that feature writing contributions by others (Anita Lane's to Stranger Than Kindness, and Long Time Man) are among the best. Cave is at his best when he has his tongue in his cheek, as on Hard On for Love, with lines like "My aim is hit this miss" and the perplexing "Coming at her like Lazarus from above". Like Lazarus?! A bloke coming out of his own tomb dressed in grave cloths?

That humour reminded me that I wanted to hear the Grinderman album from last year, so, thanks to the iTunes voucher I got for Christmas (thank you, Simon and Sylvie), I just downloaded it this afternoon.

Only recently did I find out that Your Funeral, My Trial was originally the title of a Sonny Boy Williamson song.