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Nick Cave: Murder Ballads

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s

Artist: Nick Cave
Title: Murder Ballads
Released: 1996.02.01
Label: Mute Records
Time: 58:43
Producer(s): See Artists ...
Appears with:
Category: Pop/Rock
Rating: *****..... (5/10)
Media type: CD
Purchase date:  2003.02.03
Price in €: 9,99
Web address: www.nick-cave.com

 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Song of Joy (Cave/Milton) - 6:46
[2] Stagger Lee (Bargeld/Casey/Cave/Harvey/Savage/Sclavunos/Traditional/Wydler) - 5:14
[3] Henry Lee (Cave/Traditional) - 3:56
[4] Lovely Creature (Bargeld/Casey/Cave/Harvey/Wydler) - 4:12
[5] Where the Wild Roses Grow (Cave) - 3:56
[6] The Curse of Millhaven (Cave) - 6:54
[7] The Kindness of Strangers (Cave) - 4:37
[8] Crow Jane (Casey/Cave) - 4:13
[9] O'Malley's Bar (Cave) - 14:28
[10] Death Is Not the End (Dylan) - 4:27

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


NICK CAVE - Organ, Guitar, Piano, Arranger, Organ (Hammond), Sound Effects, Vocals, Choir, Chorus, String Arrangements, Producer

The Bad Sees are:
MICK HARVEY - Hammond B3 Organ, Acoustic & Bass Guitar, Percussion, Arranger, Drums, Background Vocals, String Arrangements, Space Belt, Producer
BLIXA BARGELD - Guitar, Sound Effects, Vocals, Voices, Producer
THOMAS WYDLER - Trombone, Drums, Maraccas, Tambourine, Vocals, Choir, Chorus, Producer
CONWAY SAVAGE - Organ, Piano, Vocals, Choir, Chorus, Producer
MARTYN P. CASEY - Bass Guitar, Vocals, Choir, Chorus, Producer
JIM SCLAVUNOS - Percussion, Drums, Tambourine, Bells, Producer

KYLIE MINOGUE - Vocals
BRIAN HOOPER - Bass, Vocals, Choir, Chorus
HUGO RACE - Guitar
JENNY ANDERSON - Violin
WARREN ELLIS - Violin, Accordion, Vocals, Choir, Chorus
HELEN MOUNTFORT - Cello
KERRAN COULTER - Viola
SUE SIMPSON - Violin
JEN ANDERSON - Violin
TERRY EDWARDS - Horn

DAVE GRANEY & THE CORAL SNAKES - Vocals, Choir, Chorus
ANITA LANE - Sound Effects, Vocals
PJ HARVEY - Vocals
GERI JOHNSON - Vocals, Choir, Chorus
JAMES JOHNSTON - Vocals, Choir, Chorus
SHANE MACGOWAN - Vocals
ROWLAND HOWARD - Vocals, Choir, Chorus
KATHARINE BLAKE - Vocals, Choir, Chorus
LIZ CORCORAN - Vocals
MARIELLA DEL CONTE - Vocals
IAN JOHNSON - Choir, Chorus
SPENCER P. JONES - Vocals, Choir, Chorus
CLARE MOORE - Vocals, Choir, Chorus
ASTRID MUNDAY - Vocals, Choir, Chorus


VICTOR VAN VUGT - Producer
TONY COHEN - Producer
GREGG JACKMAN - Mixing
RAY STAFF - Mastering

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


1996 CD Mute/Reprise 46195
1996 CD Mute/Reprise 46195
1996 CS Mute/Reprise 46195
1996 CD Pony Canyon 00885



"This record is chiefly a comic record, it's designed to be funny. It didn't start off that way, but as soon as we started to make it, it became clear that the whole idea was quite ludicrous, to be making an entire record like this....it became a bit of a joke."

Cave to The Independent, January 1996



"The song ('Where The Wild Roses Grow') is a murder ballad, but it's also a song about the way I feel about Kylie. It's not that I wanted to kill her like I did in the song - there's a kind of expression of love which goes through the lyrics."

Cave to Vox, March 1996



"I'm always very happy for my records to confound and irritate, but I get intensely annoyed when people suggest I filter my thoughts through a system of political correctness."

Cave to NME, January 1996



That Nick Cave has themed his latest - and tenth - solo album around murder should surprise no-one. The Australian songwriter has long spoken of his fascination for what he calls the 'language of violence'. Earlier songs like The Mercy Seat, an account of a condemned killer's last moments before execution or John Finn's Wife, a humid story of lust and death, were both musically and dramatically tours de forces. Cave's epic approach to songs marks him out as a fine storyteller with an astute talent for broad, vivid lines. His own language is unique in current rock music: peppered with Biblical imagery mixed with that of American folk song: his facility for words is matched only by older peers, Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen.

There are some truly chilling songs, like Song of Joy which appropriates some of Satan's best lines from Paradise Lost in a way that consciously blurs the identity of the killer. There are some hilarious songs: the Curse of Millhaven, a romping inventory of the exploits of a teenage psycho named Laureate, is straight out of Tom Lehrer.

Murder Ballads arrives at a moment when rock music is being scrutinized by censors in the grip of a moral panic. Recent furore surrounding rap albums from black American artists has suggested a casual link: that singing about violence is tantamount to inciting it. This is, in my opinion, a spurious logic which conceals a more generalized fear about violence itself. Cave's enduring power is to confront the passion and its capacity to be simultaneously destructive and creative. Singing about death is another way of approaching life. And the fact that Cave is, at heart, an old-fashioned moralist is often ignored.

There are many reasons why Murder Ballads is a superlative album. Cave's voice is a constantly maturing vehicle, the deep tones startling and moving. Guitarists Blixa Bargeld and Mick Haney produce a multi-textured roughness while percussionist Jim Sclavunus and pianist Conway Savage provide the sparse, rhythmical undertow characteristic of Cave's music. There is nothing superfluous, nothing redundant. Cave may take his cues from raw blues and preacher songs but he does so in a way that enlarges the format. And in his unflinching recognition of the very ordinariness of violence there is nothing gratuitous. A rare, superb treat.

New Internationalist, 1996



Murder Ballads? Well, it had to happen. Nick Cave has always been on intimate terms with Mr. Death, kind of like the Knight in Bergman's classic movie The Seventh Seal, involved with the Grim Reaper in a chess match which he must ultimately lose. From cheerful ditties like his former band The Birthday Party's "Dead Joe" and "A Dead Song," through to knee-slappers like his cover of Tim Rose's "Long Time Man" (remorseful convict tells tale of spousal murder) and his own "The Mercy Seat" (confessions of a killer about to get the electric chair) with his backing superband The Bad Seeds, Cave has found death to be the last great mystery in our jaded Western culture, an event beyond the reach of the Tin God Technology in which bourgeois society misguidedly places its hopes for immortality. Then again, a man whose drug overdoses count in double figures would perhaps be expected to have more insight into the matter at hand than your garden-variety yuppie toiling away for Bill Gates.

That being said, this isn't just another Nick Cave album, except in its continuation of the high quality art we've come to expect from him. In a strange kind of way, Murder Ballads can be viewed as the counterpart to Cave's idol Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man, the album where the singer-songwriter previously perceived as "depressing" or "morbid" overtly embraces the black humour which has always been implicit in his work. It might sound as if, by describing a song like the 14 minute lounge-jazz epic "O'Malley's Bar," a blood-soaked tale wherein the totality of said bar's proprietors and patrons get blown away, as "funny," this critic has cracked. But just listen and try to stifle at least a giggle.

In "O'Malley's Bar," murder takes its place in the absurdity of human existence as just one more--admittedly extreme--facet of a life which nobody even remotely understands. The protagonist is an ineffectual small town resident who has decided to give meaning to his nowheresville existence through murder: as he starts on his spree, he "feels his dick grow long and hard," his impotent former self becoming transmuted into a winged raven of death. Cave's vocal delivery, which might best be described as "controlled hysteria," the off-the-wall, detailed descriptions by the narrator of his various murderous actions, and the incongruity of the backing music, here take us into the OTT realm of mordant humour. Still, as with Cohen at his best, Cave doesn't lose sight of serious moral and ethical questions, as smack in the midst of his carnage, the narrator debates the question of freewill: "I have no freewill I cried . . . If I have no freewill, how can I be morally culpable?" The conclusion, where the killer is shown to be something far less than a (anti)hero of any sort, is again both intensely funny and thought-provoking.

Rivaling "O'Malley's Bar" in the gallows humour sweepstakes is "The Curse of Millhaven," where Cave, notoriously antipathetic to the psychobabble of North American therapy culture, unleashes a murderous narrator--a woman this time, tellingly--who is unequivocally an unrepentantly evil, mocking the efforts of the social engineers who believe she might be "cured" of her bloodlust. As all people, young, old and in-between, have to die eventually anyway, why not help them along?, she reasons, admitting in aside that she's a natural "monster" who's beyond all attempts at rehabilitation. In fact, such efforts merely provide great amusement for our Lottie, whose only real regret is that she didn't have time to inflict still more carnage before she was caught: "It's Rorschach and Prozac and everything is groovy!" sings an gleefully unhinged-sounding Cave, effortlessly taking on a persona of the opposite gender. Again, along with the laughs, Cave manages to take on some serious issues here which strike at the heart of contemporary Western culture: not only nature vs. nurture, but also the notion--promulgated by many recent PC theorists--which posit the stereotypes of the male as rapacious murderer and the female as pure and innocent victim. For Cave, the darkness which leads to murder is a darkness which lies within us all, regardless of gender.

Murder Ballads, however, doesn't always tread the line between sardonic and serious, the album's opener, "Song of Joy," being a case in point. This one ranks up there with "The Mercy Seat" as one of Cave's most chilling excursions into the ethical void of a killer's mind, as a man, formerly a doctor but now a vagabond, relates the tale of his wife and daughters' murders, gradually revealing the very probable truth about himself in the process. This is followed up by a return to black humour with the ace retelling of the "Stagger Lee" myth, the Bad Seeds--in typically sympathetic, versatile form thoroughout--providing a loping, but razor-sharp r&b riff over which Cave relates an X-rated tale of murderous machismo not likely to be receiving heavy airplay anytime soon. Completing a triple-play is the high melodrama of "Henry Lee," a duet with Cave's female doppleganger PJ Harvey ( a match made in . . . well, not heaven, surely) in which the traditional ballad receives an arrangement owing much to Cohen's "Joan of Arc." PJ's protagonist repeatedly sticks recalcitrant love-object Henry Lee with a pen-knife and deposits him at the bottom of a deep well to rot.

"Henry Lee" and the album's other boy-girl duet, "Where The Wild Roses Grow" (with fellow Aussie Kylie Minogue taking a surprisingly haunting vocal turn) also pay homage to another of Cave's most treasured influences: Sinatra. No, not Frank so much as Nancy, specifically her supercool team-ups with singer-songwriter extraordinare Lee Hazlewood from the 1960s ("Some Velvet Morning," ""Sand," "Summer Wine," etc.), their sunny eroticism taken for a walk on the wild side when filtered through Cave's own Gothic sensibilities. A kitsch element exists here, surely, but one which on repeatedly listening tends to recede, as you remember what it was like when people dared to write songs that dealt with life's stark realities without resorting to the cutesy postmodern irony in which all must be made to seem a joke so that nothing will ever hurt. Cave dares the listener to get beyond the superficialities of the time and really feel, and to this end the duets here succeed marvelously.

A couple of weaker moments, however, do mar the album slightly: "The Kindness of Strangers," a countrified lament, drowns in its own lugubriousness (the Bob Ezrinish, "weeping" sound-effects here were a big mistake), and "Crow Jane" is an OK but unnecessary ditty eclipsed by the superior "Millhaven." But the grand finale, "Death Is Not The End," a cover of an obscure 80s Bob Dylan number (and featuring turns from the album's female guest stars as well as ex-Pogue and Cave pal Shane MacGowan and other band members), strikes the perfect closing tone. A Johnny Cash and the Carter Family sing-a-long feel pervades the track: you can almost picture the singers waving goodbye as the song fades out and the curtains are drawn. "See you next week, next year, or in the next life." In Cave's hands, this superficially comforting and placid song takes on discomfiting overtones: if death is not the end, does that mean we'll be facing more of the degradation, despair and death we've just been treated to in the next life? And the next? Murder Ballads, Nick Cave's loosest, most multi-dimensional solo album, thus ends on this extremely ambivalent note, and we can picture its creator sitting back with a wicked grin, realizing that the last laugh is perhaps not the last, but is most surely on us all.

Johnny Walker, 1996



In some ways, Murder Ballads is the record Nick Cave has been waiting to make for his entire career. Death and violence have always haunted his music, even when he wasn't explicitly singing about the subject. On Murder Ballads, he sings about nothing but death in the most grusome, shocking fashion. Divided between originals and covers, the record is awash in both morbid humor and sobering horror, as the Bad Seeds provide an appropriate backdrop for the carnage, alternating between blues, country, and lounge-jazz. Opening the affair is "Song for Joy," a tale from a father who has witnessed his family's death at the hands of serial killer. It is the most disturbing number on the record, lacking any of the gallows humor that balances out the other songs. Cave's duets with Kylie Minogue ("Where the Wild Roses Grow") and PJ Harvey ("Henry Lee") are intriguing, but the true tours de force of the album are "Stagger Lee" and "O'Malley's Bar." Working from an obscure, vulgar variation on "Stagger Lee," Cave increases the sordidness of the song, making Stagger an utterly unredeemable character. The original "O'Malley's Bar" is even stronger, as he spins a bizarrely funny epic of one man's slaughter of an entire bar. During "O'Malley's Bar," Cave and the Bad Seeds are at the height of their powers and the performances rank among the best they have ever recorded.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - All-Music Guide, © 1992 - 2003 AEC One Stop Group, Inc.



Nick Cave's been writing songs about killing and other evil things since he first surfaced in 1980 as the Birthday Party's pale, skinny, goth-punk Jim Morrison. But the murder ballads that provide this set's title are different, tantalizingly deliberate. Sure, there's plenty of trademark Cave here, but Murder Ballads is a fascinating concept album that uses the narrative ballad form of the English folk tradition to tell of murder: random deaths, passion crimes, and killing sprees, all in one package. Cave clearly thrives in this genre, and he produces some of his sharpest and most facile writing to date. "Song of Joy," a genuinely scary campfire mystery of a murdered family and an unnamed killer, chillingly weaves clues into the lyrics, while "Where the Wild Roses Grow" is a narrative duet in which killer (Cave) and victim (pop star Kylie Minogue) reveal parallel tales. Cave even shows his knack for adaptation on Bob Dylan's "Death Is Not the End": he recontextualizes a song of heavenly comfort into a sort of zombie "We Are the World" (featuring Minogue, PJ Harvey, Shane MacGowan, and others) in which "death is not the end" of pain and suffering. Above all, Murder Ballads should be heard as a work of pulp fiction--as sensationally funny as it is harrowing. The already violent traditional song "Stagger Lee" becomes gangsta folk, so ridiculously packed with obscenity and brutality it would make the Geto Boys cringe. And Cave's (unintentional?) point to would-be censors--that bad-ass songs existed long before rappers polluted the airways--should not be missed.

Roni Sarig - Amazon.com



Seit er 1980 als bleiche, dürre, Gothic-Punk-Version von Jim Morrison bei Birthday Party auftauchte, schreibt Nick Cave Lieder übers Töten und andere schlimme Sachen. Die Mörderballaden aber, die für den Titel dieses Albums Pate standen, sind anders, verführerisch besonnen. Klar, wir finden hier auch vieles, was für Cave typisch ist, aber Murder Ballads ist ein faszinierendes Konzeptalbum, das die Erzählform der Ballade aus der englischen Folk-Tradition benutzt, um vom Morden zu erzählen: zufällige Tode, Verbrechen aus Leidenschaft, und Mordtouren -- alles ist drin. Cave blüht in diesem Genre ganz offensichtlich auf; und er schreibt zum Teil so flüssig und treffend wie nie zuvor. Bei "Song of Joy", einer echt unheimlichen Lagerfeuerkriminalgeschichte von einer ermordeten Familie und einem unbekannten Killer, sind Hinweise gruselig in den Text eingewoben. Bei "Where the Wild Roses Grow" erzählen der Mörder (Cave) und das Opfer (Popstar Kylie Minogue) parallele Geschichten.
Cave zeigt sogar ein Geschick für Adaptionen: Aus Bob Dylans "Death Is Not the End" (das eigentlich den Trost im Himmel verspricht) wird eine Art Zombie-"We Are the World" (mit Minogue, PJ Harvey, Shane McGowan u.a.), bei dem der Himmel eben nicht das Ende von Schmerz und Leid bedeutet. Vor allem sollte man Murder Ballads als 'Pulp Fiction' (nicht der Film) betrachten -- es ist ebenso urkomisch wie grauenhaft. Das sowieso schon gewalttätige Traditional "Stagger Lee" wird zum Gangsta-Folk -- so irrsinnig vollgepackt mit Obszönität und Brutalität, daß es die Ghetto Boys schaudern machen würde. Und Caves (unabsichtliche?) Aussage sollte nicht unter den Tisch fallen: Diese fiesen Songs gab es schon lange bevor die bösen Rapper kamen.

Roni Sarig - Aus der Amazon.de-Redaktion



Den australischen Punk-Pionier Nick Cave - stilitisch irgendwo zwischen archaischem Bluesidiom und grenzüberschreitender Avantgarde anzusiedeln - kennt man als Protagonisten einer oft bedrohlich-apokalyptisch wirkenden Musik. Ein Underground-Kultstar mit brüchigen Timbre, der sich nun zu einer seiner Obsessionen bekennt: Kylie Minogue. Mit dem zarten Popengel hat er das unwiderstehliche Duett "Where The Wild Roses Grow" zu Überraschungshit gesungen. Das Kernstück einer Sammlung morbider Songs mit seinen Bad Seeds und weiteren Gästen wie P.J. Harvey, Anita Lane und Shane MacGowan. Nick Caves "Murder Ballads" sind eine Sammlung von Killersongs

© HIFI Test - Detlev Kinsler
 

 L y r i c s


SONG OF JOY

Have mercy on me, sir
Allow me to impose on you
I have no place to stay
And my bones are cold right through
I will tell you a story
Of a man and his family
And I swear that it is true
Ten years ago I met a girl named Joy
She was a sweet and happy thing
Her eyes were bright blue jewels
And we were married in the spring
I had no idea what happiness and little love could bring
Or what life had in store
But all things move toward their end
All things move toward their their end
On that you can be sure
La la la la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la la la la
Then one morning I awoke to find her weeping
And for many days to follow
She grew so sad and lonely
Became Joy in name only
Within her breast there launched an unnamed sorrow
And a dark and grim force set sail
Farewell happy fields
Where joy forever dwells
* Hail horrors hail *
Was it an act of contrition or some awful premonition
As if she saw into the heart of her final blood-soaked night
Those lunatic eyes, that hungry kitchen knife
Ah, I see sir, that I have your attention!
Well, could it be?
How often I've asked that question
Well, then in quick succession
We had babies, one, two, three
We called them Hilda, Hattie and Holly
They were their mother's children
Their eyes were bright blue jewels
And they were quiet as a mouse
There was no laughter in the house
No, not from Hilda, Hattie or Holly
"No wonder", people said, "poor mother Joy's so melancholy"
Well, one night there came a visitor to our little home
I was visiting a sick friend
I was a doctor then
Joy and the girls were on their own
La la la la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la la la la
Joy had been bound with electrical tape
In her mouth a gag
She'd been stabbed repeatedly
And stuffed into a sleeping bag
In their very cots my girls were robbed of their lives
Method of murder much the same as my wife's
Method of murder much the same as my wife's
It was midnight when I arrived home
Said to the police on the telephone
Someone's taken four innocent lives
They never caught the man
He's still on the loose
It seems he has done many many more
Quotes John Milton on the walls in the victim's blood
The police are investigating at tremendous cost
In my house he wrote  "his red right hand"
That, I'm told is from Paradise Lost
The wind round here gets wicked cold
But my story is nearly told
I fear the morning will bring quite a frost
And so I've left my home
I drift from land to land
I am upon your step and you are a family man
Outside the vultures wheel
The wolves howl, the serpents hiss
And to extend this small favour, friend
Would be the sum of earthly bliss
Do you reckon me a friend?
The sun to me is dark
And silent as the moon
Do you, sir, have a room?
Are you beckoning me in?
La la la la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la la la la


STAGGER LEE

It was back in '32 when times were hard
He had a Colt .45 and a deck of cards
Stagger Lee
He wore rat-drawn shoes and an old stetson hat
Had a '28 Ford, had payments on that
Stagger Lee
His woman threw him out in the ice and snow
And told him, "Never ever come back no more"
Stagger Lee
So he walked through the rain and he walked through the mud
Till he came to a place called The Bucket Of Blood
Stagger Lee
He said "Mr Motherfucker, you know who I am"
The barkeeper said, "No, and I don't give a good goddamn"
To Stagger Lee
He said, "Well bartender, it's plain to see
I'm that bad motherfucker called Stagger Lee"
Mr. Stagger Lee
Barkeep said, "Yeah, I've heard your name down the way
And I kick motherfucking asses like you every day"
Mr Stagger Lee
Well those were the last words that the barkeep said
'Cause Stag put four holes in his motherfucking head
Just then in came a broad called Nellie Brown
Was known to make more money than any bitch in town
She struts across the bar, hitching up her skirt
Over to Stagger Lee, she starts to flirt
With Stagger Lee
She saw the barkeep, said, "O God, he can't be dead!"
Stag said, "Well, just count the holes in the motherfucker's head"
She said, "You ain't look like you scored in quite a time.
Why not come to my pad? It won't cost you a dime"
Mr. Stagger Lee
"But there's something I have to say before you begin
You'll have to be gone before my man Billy Dilly comes in,
Mr. Stagger Lee"
"I'll stay here till Billy comes in, till time comes to pass
And furthermore I'll fuck Billy in his motherfucking ass"
Said Stagger Lee
"I'm a bad motherfucker, don't you know
And I'll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get one fat boy's asshole"
Said Stagger Lee
Just then Billy Dilly rolls in and he says, "You must be
That bad motherfucker called Stagger Lee"
Stagger Lee
"Yeah, I'm Stagger Lee and you better get down on your knees
And suck my dick, because If you don't you're gonna be dead"
Said Stagger Lee
Billy dropped down and slobbered on his head
And Stag filled him full of lead
Oh yeah.


HENRY LEE

Get down, get down, little Henry Lee
And stay all night with me
You won't find a girl in this damn world
That will compare with me
And the wind did howl and the wind did blow
La la la la la
La la la la lee
A little bird lit down on Henry Lee
I can't get down and I won't get down
And stay all night with thee
For the girl I have in that merry green land
I love far better than thee
And the wind did howl and the wind did blow
La la la la la
La la la la lee
A little bird lit down on Henry Lee
She leaned herself against a fence
Just for a kiss or two
And with a little pen-knife held in her hand
She plugged him through and through
And the wind did roar and the wind did moan
La la la la la
La la la la lee
A little bird lit down on Henry Lee
Come take him by his lilly-white hands
Come take him by his feet
And throw him in this deep deep well
Which is more than one hundred feet
And the wind did howl and the wind did blow
La la la la la
La la la la lee
A little bird lit down on Henry Lee
Lie there, lie there, little Henry Lee
Till the flesh drops from your bones
For the girl you have in that merry green land
Can wait forever for you to come home
And the wind did howl and the wind did moan
La la la la la
La la la la lee
A little bird lit down on Henry Lee


LOVELY CREATURE

There she stands, this lovely creature
There she stands, there she stands
With her hair full of ribbons
And green gloves on her hands
So I asked this lovely creature
Yes, I asked. Yes I asked
Would she walk with me a while
Through this night so fast
She took my hand, this lovely creature
"Yes", she said, "Yes", she said
"Yes, I'll walk with you a while"
It was a joyful man she led
Over hills, this lovely creature
Over mountains, over ranges
By great pyramids and sphinxs
We met drifters and strangers
Oh the sands, my lovely creature
And the mad, moaning winds
At night the deserts writhed
With diabolical things
Through the night, through the night
The wind lashed and it whipped me
When I got home, my lovely creature
She was no longer with me
Somewhere she lies, this lovely creature
Beneath the slow drifting sands
With her hair full of ribbons
And green gloves on her hands


WHERE THE WILD ROSES GROW

They call me The Wild Rose
But my name was Elisa Day
Why they call me it I do not know
For my name was Elisa Day
From the first day I saw her I knew she was the one
She stared in my eyes and smiled
For her lips were the colour of the roses
That grew down the river, all bloody and wild
When he knocked on my door and entered the room
My trembling subsided in his sure embrace
He would be my first man, and with a careful hand
He wiped at the tears that ran down my face

Chorus

On the second day I brought her a flower
She was more beautiful than any woman I'd seen
I said, "Do you know where the wild roses grow
So sweet and scarlet and free?"
On the second day he came with a single red rose
Said: "Will you give me your loss and your sorrow"
I nodded my head, as I lay on the bed
He said, "If I show you the roses, will you follow?"

Chorus

On the third day he took me to the river
He showed me the roses and we kissed
And the last thing I heard was a muttered word
As he knelt (stood smiling) above me with a rock in his fist
On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow
And she lay on the bank, the wind light as a thief
And I kissed her goodbye, said, "All beauty must die"
And lent down and planted a rose between her teeth

Chorus


THE CURSE OF MILLHAVEN

I live in a town called Millhaven
And it's small and it's mean and it's cold
But if you come around just as the sun goes down
You can watch the whole town turn to gold
It's around about then that I used to go a-roaming
Singing La la la la La la la lie
All God's children they all gotta die
My name is Loretta but I prefer Lottie
I'm closing in on my fifteenth year
And if you think you have seen a pair of eyes more green
Then you sure didn't see them around here
My hair is yellow and I'm always a-combing
La la la la La la la lie
Mama often told me we all got to die
You must have heard about The Curse Of Millhaven
How last Christmas Bill Blake's little boy didn't come home
They found him next week in One Mile Creek
His head bashed in and his pockets full of stones
Well, just imagine all the wailing and moaning
La la la la La la la lie
Even little Billy Blake's boy, he had to die
Then Professor O'Rye from Millhaven High
Found nailed to his door his prize-winning terrier
Then next day the old fool brought little Biko to school
And we all had to watch as he buried her
His eulogy to Biko had all the tears a-flowing
La la la la La la la lie
Even God's little creatures, they have to die
Our little town fell into a state of shock
A lot of people were saying things that made little sense
Then the next thing you know the head of Handyman Joe
Was found in the fountain of the Mayor's residence
Foul play can really get a small town going
La la la la La la la lie
Even God's children all have to die
Then, in a cruel twist of fate, old Mrs Colgate
Was stabbed but the job was not complete
The last thing she said before the cops pronounced her dead
Was, "My killer is Loretta and she lives across the street!"
Twenty cops burst through my door without even phoning
La la la la La la la lie
The young ones, the old ones, they all gotta die
Yes, it is I, Lottie. The Curse Of Millhaven
I've struck horror in the heart of this town
Like my eyes ain't green and my hair ain't yellow
It's more like the other way around
I gotta pretty little mouth underneath all the foaming
La la la la La la la lie
Sooner or later we all gotta die
Since I was no bigger than a weavil they've been saying I was evil
That if "bad" was a boot that I'd fit it
That I'm a wicked young lady, but I've been trying hard lately
O fuck it! I'm a monster! I admit it!
It makes me so mad my blood really starts a-going
La la la la La la la lie
Mama always told me that we all gotta die
Yeah, I drowned the Blakey kid, stabbed Mrs. Colgate, I admit
Did the handyman with his circular saw in his garden shed
But I never crucified little Biko, that was two junior high school psychos
Stinky Bohoon and his friend with the pumpkin-sized head
I'll sing to the lot, now you got me going
La la la la La la la lie
All God's children have all gotta die
There were all the others, all our sisters and brothers
You assumed were accidents, best forgotten
Recall the children who broke through the ice on Lake Tahoo?
Everyone assumed the "Warning" signs had followed them to the bottom
Well, they're underneath the house where I do quite a bit of stowing
La la la la La la la lie
Even twenty little children, they had to die
And the fire of '91 that razed the Bella Vista slum
There was the biggest shit-fight this country's ever seen
Insurance companies ruined, land lords getting sued
All cause of wee girl with a can of gasoline
Those flames really roared when the wind started blowing
La la la la La la la lie
Rich man, poor man, all got to die
Well I confessed to all these crimes and they put me on trial
I was laughing when they took me away
Off to the asylum in an old black Mariah
It ain't home, but you know, it's fucking better than jail
It ain't such bad old place to have a home in
La la la la La la la lie
All God's children they all gotta die
Now I got shrinks that will not rest with their endless Rorschach tests
I keep telling them they're out to get me
They ask me if I feel remorse and I answer, "Why of course!
There is so much more I could have done if they'd let me!"
So it's Rorschach and Prozac and everything is groovy
Singing La la la la La la la lie
All God's children they all have to die
La la la la La la la lie
I'm happy as a lark and everything is fine
Singing La la la la La la la lie
Yeah, everything is groovy and everything is fine
Singing La la la la La la la lie
All God's children they gotta die


THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

They found Mary Bellows cuffed to the bed
With a rag in her mouth and a bullet in her head
O poor Mary Bellows
She'd grown up hungry, she'd grown up poor
She left her home in Arkansas
O poor Mary Bellows
She wanted to see the deep blue sea
She travelled across Tennessee
O poor Mary Bellows
She met a man along the way
He introduced himself as Richard Slade
O poor Mary Bellows
Poor Mary thought that she might die
When she saw the ocean for the first time
O poor Mary Bellows
She checked into a cheap little place
Richard Slade carried in her old suitcase
O poor Mary Bellows
"I'm a good girl, sir", she said to him
I couldn't possibly permit you in
O poor Mary Bellows
Slade tipped his hat and winked his eye
And turned away without goodbye
O poor Mary Bellows
She sat on her bed and thought of home
With the sea breeze whistling all alone
O poor Mary Bellows
In hope and loneliness she crossed the floor
And undid the latch on the front door
O poor Mary Bellows
They found her the next day cuffed to the bed
A rag in her mouth and a bullet in her head
O poor Mary Bellows
So mothers keep your girls at home
Don't let them journey all alone
Tell them this world is full of danger
And to shun the company of strangers
O poor Mary Bellows
O poor Mary Bellows


CROW JANE

Crow Jane Crow Jane
Crow Jane
Horrors in her head
That her tongue dare not name
She lives alone by the river
The rolling rivers of pain
Crow Jane Crow Jane
Crow Jane Ah hah huh
There is one shining eye on a hard-hat
The company closed down the mine
Winking on waters they came
Twenty hard-hats, twenty eyes
In her clapboard shack
Only six foot by five
They killed all her whiskey
And poured their pistols dry
Crow Jane Crow Jane
Crow Jane Ah hah huh
Seems you've remembered
How to sleep, how to sleep
The house dogs are in your turnips
And your yard dogs are running all over the street
Crow Jane Crow Jane
Crow Jane Ah hah huh
"O Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson
Why you close up shop so late?"
"Just fitted out a girl who looked like a bird
Measured .32, .44, .38
I asked that girl which road she was taking
Said she was walking the road of hate
But she stopped on a coal-trolley up to New Haven
Population: 48"
Crow Jane Crow Jane
Crow Jane Ah hah huh
Your guns are drunk and smoking
They've followed you right back to your gate
Laughing all the way back from the new town
Population, now, 28
Crow Jane Crow Jane
Crow Jane Ah hah huh


O'MALLEY'S BAR

I am tall and I am thin
Of an enviable hight
And I've been known to be quite handsome
In a certain angle and in certain light
Well I entered into O'Malley's
Said, "O'Malley I have a thirst"
O'Malley merely smiled at me
Said "You wouldn't be the first"
I knocked on the bar and pointed
To a bottle on the shelf
And as O'Malley poured me out a drink
I sniffed and crossed myself
My hand decided that the time was nigh
And for a moment it slipped from view
And when it returned, it fairly burned
With confidence anew
Well the thunder from my steely fist
Made all the glasses jangle
When I shot him, I was so handsome
It was the light, it was the angle
Huh! Hmmmmmm
"Neighbours!" I cried, "Friends!" I screamed
I banged my fist upon the bar
"I bear no grudge against you!"
And my dick felt long and hard
"I am the man for which no God waits
But for which the whole world yearns
I'm marked by darkness and by blood
And one thousand powder-burns"
Well, you know those fish with the swollen lips
That clean the ocean floor
When I looked at poor O'Malley's wife
That's exactly what I saw
I jammed the barrel under her chin
And her face looked raw and vicious
Her head it landed in the sink
With all the dirty dishes
Her little daughter Siobhan
Pulled beers from dusk till down
And amongst the townfolk she was a bit of a joke
But she pulled the best beer in town
I swooped magnificent upon her
As she sat shivering in her grief
Like the Madonna painted on the church-house wall
In whale's blood and banana leaf
Her throat it crumbled in my fist
And I spun heroically around
To see Caffrey rising from his seat
I shot that mother fucker down
Mmmmmmmmmm Yeah Yeah Yeah
"I have no free will", I sang
As I flew about the murder
Mrs. Richard Holmes, she screamed
You really should have heard her
I sang and I laughed, I howled and I wept
I panted like a pup
I blew a hole in Mrs. Richard Holmes
And her husband stupidly stood up
As he screamed, "You are an evil man"
And I paused a while to wonder
"If I have no free will then how can I
Be morally culpable, I wonder"
I shot Richard Holmes in the stomach
And gingerly he sat down
And he whispered weirdly, "No offense"
And then lay upon the ground
"None taken", I replied to him
To which he gave a little cough
With blazing wings I neatly aimed
And blew his head completely off
I've lived in this town for thirty years
And to no-one I am a stranger
And I put new bullets in my gun
Chamber upon chamber
And I turned my gun on the bird-like Mr. Brookes
I thought of Saint Francis and his sparrows
And as I shot down the youthful Richardson
It was St. Sebastian I thought of, and his arrows
Hhhhhhhhhh Mmmmmmmmmmmm
I said, "I want to introduce myself
And I am glad that all you came"
And I leapt upon the bar
And shouted out my name
Well Jerry Bellows, he hugged his stool
Closed his eyes and shrugged and laughed
And with an ashtray as big as a fucking really big brick
I split his head in half
His blood spilled across the bar
Like a steaming scarlet brook
And I knelt at it's edge on the counter
Wiped the tears away and looked
Well, the light in there was blinding
Full of God and ghosts of truth
I smiled at Henry Davenport
Who made an attempt to move
Well, from the position I was standing
The strangest thing I ever saw
The bullet entered through the top of his chest
And blew his bowels out on the floor
Well I floated down the counter
Showing no remorse
I shot a hole in Kathleen Carpenter
Recently divorced
But remorse i felt and remorse I had
It clung to every thing
From the raven's hair upon my head
To the feathers on my wings
Remorse sqeezed my hand in it's fradulent claw
With it's golden hairless chest
And I glided through the bodies
And killed the fat man Vincent West
Who sat quietly in his chair
A man become a child
And I raised the gun up to his head
Executioner-style
He made no attempt to resist
So fat and dull and lazy
"Did you know I lived in your street?" I said
And he looked at me as though I were crazy
"O", he said, "I had no idea"
And he grew as quiet as a mouse
And the roar of the pistol when it went off
Near blew that hat right off the house
Hmmmmmm Uh Uh
Well, I caught my eye in the mirror
And gave it a long and loving inspection
"There stands some kind of man", I roared
And there did, in the reflection
My hair combed back like a raven's wing
My muscles hard and tight
And curling from the business end of my gun
Was a query-mark of cordite
Well I spun to the left, I spun to the right
And I spun to the left again
"Fear me! Fear me! Fear me!"
But no one did cause they were dead
Huh! Hmmmmmmmmm
And then there were the police sirens wailing
And a bull-horn squelched and blared
"Drop your weapons and come out
With your hands held in the air"
Well, I checked the chamber of my gun
Saw I had one final bullet left
My hand, it looked almost human
As I raised it to my head
"Drop your weapon and come out!
Keep your hands above your head!"
I had one one long hard think about dying
And did exactly what they said
There must have been fifty cops out there
In a circle around O'Malley's bar
"Don't shoot", I cried, "I'm a man unarmed!"
So they put me in their car
And they sped me away from that terrible scene
And I glanced out of the window
Saw O'Malley's bar, saw the cops and the cars
And I started counting on my fingers
Aaaaaah One Aaaaaah Two Aaaaaah Three Aaaaaaah Four
O'Malley's bar O'Malley's bar


DEATH IS NOT THE END

When you're sad and when you're lonely
And you haven't got a friend
Just remember that death is not the end
And all that you held sacred
Falls down and does not mend
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end
When you're standing on the crossroads
That you cannot comprehend
Just remember that death is not the end
And all your dreams have vanished
And you don't know what's up the bend
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end
When the storm clouds gather round you
And heavy rains descend
Just remember that death is not the end
And there's no-one there to comfort you
With a helping hand to lend
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end
For the tree of life is growing
Where the spirit never dies
And the bright light of salvation
Up in dark and empty skies
When the cities are on fire
With the burning flesh of men
Just remember that death is not the end
When you search in vain to find
Some law-abiding citizen
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end
 

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