Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds -- From Her to Eternity

8/10

Here is what Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' first album, From Her to Eternity, sounds like:
You are climbing ancient, mysterious mountains, surrounded by forest, as far as the eye can see. A storm approaches, and before you know it, you are blinded and drenched, tumbling down into some unseen hole. You tumble and tumble, deeper into the mountain's hollowed insides, until you land in a strange cave of total darkness. You hear something, many things, charging toward you, feet on rock and dust, and before you know it, you are surrounded by a gang of angry goblins.
Do these goblins want to kill you? Maybe, but before it comes to that, they want to play forty-three minutes worth of songs for you. One of the goblins, a rangy, demented sounding one, does something akin to singing, though his voice snarls, sneers, and bellows far more than flirts with melody. Another goblin is steadily banging on some kind of percussion, all skin, goblin glass, and tumbling stones. There's one who plays a piano of skeletal fingers, and there are others, creating sounds from things you know not and don't even want to imagine. Also, there's one other human down there with you, a professional bass player, some poor soul kidnapped one lonely night from his dingy club attic bedroom, eyes put out, and forced to live below ground with the goblins. That is Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds first album.
Amidst this orcish cacophony, Nick Cave plants the seeds of what's to come, from the pitch-black storytelling of "Saint Huck," to the sparse, doomed finale of "A Box for Black Paul." While (the on this album, almost impossibly aptly named) Cave would travel far from these sounds and back again, one can already hear the talented genius that marks the breadth of his work.


1984 Mute Records
1. Avalanche (Leonard Cohen cover) 5:13
2. Cabin Fever! 6:11
3. Well of Misery 5:25
4. From Her to Eternity 5:33
5. Saint Huck 7:22
6. Wings Off Flies 4:06
7. A Box for Black Paul 9:42