The blues had long been a potent undercurrent in the
Birthday Party's music, so it wasn't all that surprising that Nick Cave
embraced the sound and feeling of rural blues on his second album with the Bad
Seeds, The Firstborn Is Dead. What was startling was how well Cave and his
bandmates -- Barry Adamson, Mick Harvey, and Blixa Bargeld -- were able to absorb
and honour the influences of artists like Skip James and Charley Patton while
creating a sound that was unmistakably their own. The moody obsessions of rural
blues -- trains, floods, imprisonment, sin, fear, and death -- seemed made to
order for Cave, and he was able to tap into the doomy iconography of this music
with potent emotional force; on "Tupelo," he makes a sweeping and
disturbing epic of the rain-swept night when Elvis Presley was born, and
"Knocking on Joe" is a tale of life on the work gang that
communicates the pain of the spirit as clearly as the ache of the body. Also,
the blues helped transform Cave's music as well as his lyrics; the brutal sonic
pummel of the Birthday Party here gave way to a more subtle and dynamic
approach that still made effective use of dissonance and bare-wired electric
guitar noise while proving the balance of loud and soft only made each side
deeper and more resonant. (The stark, barely there guitar and drums of
"Blind Lemon Jefferson" are as startling and malignantly fascinating
as anything in the Birthday Party's catalogue.) The Firstborn Is Dead proved
Nick Cave's musical palate was significantly broader than his debut album
suggested and pointed to a path (channelling the sounds and emotions of
American roots music) he would return to on many of his albums that followed.
1. Tupelo 7:18
2. Say Goodbye to the Little Girl Tree 5:10
3. Train Long-Suffering 3:49
4. Black Crow King 5:05
5. Knockin' on Joe 7:38
6. Wanted Man 5:29
7. Blind Lemon Jefferson 6:09
8. The Six Strings That Drew Blood 4:50
9. Tupelo (Single Version) [bonus track] 5:02
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