"My Songs Require You to Listen to and Understand Each Line"
1984 APR With both records, there's afeeling of something intangible, of aband an insect with an odd number of wings, she loves him not. Finally, "Box reachingwhere they ought not to go-they provoke imagination and For Black Paul" begins as aWho Killed Cock Robin-style elegy for the inspire hyperbole. Both are testaments of romantic daring and sick destruction of The Birthday Party, and develops into ahuge and bloated obsessiveness, full of feverish images of guilt, pictures of murder that are dirge that aches with ayearning beauty, the voice dredging the loss to simultaneously horrendous and secretly attractive. produce the loneliest sound you've ever heard. It was at that point that it first became clear that Nick's songwriting was Of course it's not constructed without acertain humour, but even by departing from every mode known to rock music and developing into the standards of The Birthday Party, it's adark variety indeed -there's some new, iridescent form, in turns trenchant and direct, epic and not alot to laugh about. It's awork more contemplative than Marc overblown. Meanwhile, the band's music was hurling itself into astate of Almond's Torment And Toreros, but one that shares its total ambition. wild, epileptic disorder that seemed to be driven by astate of frenzy, even From Her To Eternity is astatement of romantic irrationalism, stretching in its most dangerously restrained moments. to the very limits. With The Birthday Party literallyfalling apart-Rowland SHoward had already gone and Blixa Bargeld from Einstürzende Neubauten 1ALK TO NICK Cave and you're talking to avariety of characters.
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