Essay: An Intro/On Separating An Artist From Their Art

Recent controversies surrounding Tyler, The Creator and the content of his lyrics got me to thinking about the age old problem of separating an artist from their art. This in turn led me to finally introduce a new series to Whiskey Pie, simply titled Essay, in which I plan to get into more in-depth topics relating to music. This will be anything from re-reviews of albums, lengthy essays or personal reflections on albums, or discussion of things relating to music, such as this case.

While I think the hype for Tyler, The Creator and his fellows is a bit overblown, I also think that taking him seriously as a bigot or sexist kind of misses the point, too. Didn't we already go through this with Eminem anyway? There's the real Eminem, let's say, who would never do anything purposefully to hurt gays, and then there's the persona of Eminem featured in his music, a sort of white trash hip hop kid who fucks up a lot and uses bad language. In junior high, my friends and I got in the habit of using 'jew' as a general pejorative term. Looking back, it was immature and racist; none of us were jewish and no one we knew was, either. I'm not saying it was right, but keep in mind, we didn't have anything against Judaism. It was wrong, yes, but it was playful and we were immature 13 year olds. Eminem and Tyler, The Creator speak to those people and they resonate not because they introduce listeners to racist/sexist slang, but because the audience recognizes terms they probably use on a daily basis already.

Awesome album, by the way

Anyway, if you really want to turn this into a race issue, I can point to any number of well respected white artists who've used language just as bad, if not worse. Nick Cave's Murder Ballads album was just such a case. You know he doesn't condone or commit murder in real life, but as an artist with a certain persona, he can explore the elation and joy, from a first person point of view, of murderers. He is literally profiting off of murder and discussion of it, which, even setting aside race, seems worse in my book than using F words or N words. Racism and sexism aren't always acted on, and anyway, words are a safe avenue of expression. I'd rather have my feelings hurt by someone calling me a nerd or a cracker than someone sticking a knife in my back, or to be blown away by a psychopath in a bar as detailed in excruciating detail in Nick Cave's 'O'Malley's Bar.'

All of which eventually gets me to my point: an artist is not always embodying their art. When the South Park guys have a racist Chinese stereotype who mixes up L's and R's and pronounces "city" like "shitty", they are not saying that they despise Asians or that it's OK to mock them. It's simply part of their shtick to push buttons and at this point every group in the world has gotten it good from them.

Awesome episode(s), by the way

I'm reminded, too, about a quote from conservative journalist/writer PJ O'Rourke. I completely forget which show it was on, and I couldn't track down the quote online, but he was on one of those countdowns/interviews on VH1 where they have a random assortment of talking heads spew quotes about this or that, cutting occasionally to period television clips and/or news footage. Anyway, he said something to the effect of, why did everyone think that musicians in the 1960s had all the answers and were going to save the world? He argued they really didn't know anything about politics, besides which, playing music won't really change anything or convince anyone of anything, politically speaking. Magicians and street performers don't know anything about politics, they just know how to make doves appear; they never have and never will change the world or influence politics, so why would musicians?

Kind of a right wing prick, but also kind of hilarious

I would argue that's a gross oversimplification of musicians and the effect they can have on people's lives, not to mention that someone's profession doesn't limit them from doing other things...but it is hard to argue with his main point, which is that the music of the 60s didn't change the world or somehow install the hippie ideal in the world. If music can't get people to care about each other or stop all violence, does it also follow that music can't make people hate each other and start committing violence? That's dubious logic, I realize, but I know this: the only thing music has made me stop is feeling bad about something; the only thing music has made me start doing is feeling better.

Listening to MF DOOM makes me feel better, and he raps about conquering the world. I'm effectively comforted by someone saying they want to rule over me. Well, music is an amazing thing that defies logic. And P.C. language sticklers.

Grinderman- Grinderman 2

Nick Cave rarely disappoints, so it may sound unfair when I call Grinderman's debut one of 2007's best surprises. It was a surprise not in the sense of how good it was, but simply by its very existence. Had Cave wanted to release the music under his own name, or revive the Bad Seeds, he could have. But by designating a new side project for himself, it freed him to be as raucous and raunchy as he ever had, if not more so. Songs like 'No Pussy Blues' instantly codified the concerns of Grinderman (i.e. getting laid, rocking out), while others, like the title track or 'Man In The Moon', could have been recorded under his own name, though they would never have been conceived by Nick Cave as Nick Cave.

Many see this band as his mid-life crisis, and there is something about it that reminds me of the dirty old man persona of Charles Bukowski, as well as the early parts of Breakfast Of Champions where Kurt Vonnegut talks about how old men end up returning to an adolescent mind state, and includes many silly and vulgar crude drawings in the novel, like an anus, both connotations of a beaver, cows and hamburgers, etc. But I don't know that mid-life crisis is the right way to look at this band, just as according to Cave himself calling it a side project isn't true, either. What I'm getting at is, it took becoming Grinderman, and the Dionysian longings unleashed therein, to go from the usual work, best summarized as a romantic/poetic/intellectual/pious sort of longing, to get (back) to the animalistic/physical/pleasures-of-the-flesh/downright pagan sort of longing.

The difference between the first and second Grinderman albums is ably expressed by how the latter ends and the former begins. 'Love Bomb' draws to a close with (I assume) the Grinderman character so thin and sickly that when his lover tries to pick him up, her fingers go right through him. 'Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man', meanwhile, suggests a kind of vampiric/lycanthropic brother to the narrator, eventually corrupting both a female victim (“He sucked her dry”) and said narrator (“we took shelter under her body/and we sucked her and we sucked her and we sucked her dry).” From victim to victimizer, eh? But that suggests a rape-theme to Grinderman 2 that isn't there. Rather it's the frustration and desperation of the debut taken to the next stage, where Grinderman has had a taste but still wants more, realizing in the process that maybe things like romance and love do count. To put it another way, the cover of Grinderman is a masturbating animal, while Grinderman 2 is an animal on the prowl for more. It has a more expansive and searching take on the band's sound as a result, leading to extremes like the wealth of details on the meditative 'What I Know' as well as the full band psychedelic throwdown of album closer 'Bellringer Blues.' All the while, the band's secret asset isn't the songwriting or lyrics, but the instrumentation: a now iconic mix of distorted guitars, shrieking/wailing organs, Warren Ellis's bizarre electrified string instruments, and a punishing bass/drum engine room. If ever there were a band who could record the best cover of 'Sister Ray' possible, Grinderman is it.

Certain albums only make sense and reveal the full depth of their brilliance when you're in the proper state. I can't even hear Nico's The Marble Indexunless I feel depressed, vaguely haunted, or lonely-in-a-paranoid-way. Architecture In Helsinki's In Case We Die is a cloying, quixotic annoyance piece that I can't stand unless I'm in a good mood. Thus I don't think Grinderman 2 will completely make sense unless you're at least a little bit drunk, stoned, or sexually frustrated. 'Heathen Child', the album's first single and video, makes a good case for this. It's a very sensual, surreal song existing outside of the usual Western/Christian tropes, notably mentioning Allah and Buddah but skipping Jesus entirely. Elsewhere Cave delivers some of his most brilliant couplets yet, like “just how long you gunna be my baby?/until you come?” ('When My Baby Comes') and “the spinal cord of JFK wrapped in Marilyn Monroe's negligee/I give to you” ('Palaces Of Montezuma'). Though the offerings of the latter may be grisly according to our moral standards, to a wayward horny beast like Grinderman it's as romantic as you're liable to get.

If Grinderman concerned itself only with a single base desire, that of getting laid, then Grinderman 2 is the process of an animal coming to terms with the fact that, once one desire is sated, it only opens up a host of new ones. After all, a wolf knows how to have sex instinctively, but things like romance and intellectual/spiritual love aren't encoded in DNA. Hence odd displays of affection like 'Palaces Of Montezuma' that are analogous to pet cats leaving dead mice for you; it's the only currency they understand and can offer you. But I digress. Grinderman 2 may only amount to a four star album when you're straight and sober, but under the influence of booze, drugs, and/or sexual/romantic longing, it suddenly becomes your animal brother, inviting you to suck the blood of a victim, an act no longer as repellant as it used to be. If they won't love you, eat 'em; less competition in the survival of the fittest and you may as well fulfill one hunger.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Nick Cave- Nocturama

I'm a fan of “give it a decade and give it up” bands. None of them consciously go into it planning to break up by the ten year mark, if not sooner, and there are many exceptions to the rule, but think about it: ten years takes you from the very early Beatles to Let It Be; spans the best era of the Grateful Dead; accounts for the best albums from R.E.M., Led Zeppelin, The Who, Can, etc. Admittedly, you can't really say the same for solo artists, since they tend to have bumpy roads during their storied decades, rarely having consistently great discographies. My point is, bands or artists who are around long enough are bound to release a subpar or outright bad album by sheer statistics. Just look at Bob Dylan. Or Nick Cave.

No album from his vast body of work—at least the parts that I'm familiar with—strikes me as outright bad other than Nocturama. Mind you, this isn't a case of an otherwise good album following and preceding excellent releases, and suffering by comparison. 2001's No More Shall We Part is an underrated, moody album recorded after his recovery from heroin and alcohol abuse, while the double album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus would be a career highlight for any artist, so sustained is the quality level of songwriting and playing on those discs. No, Nocturama is just a bad album through and through: the lyrics are either insipid or cliched and the music is a confused mess of his older rambunctious style and the newer singer/songwriter stuff. If you're familiar with any of his albums from around this era, the entire album has the half-hearted feel of an uninspired artist going through the motions.

It's difficult to pin down exactly what went wrong, because someone not terribly familiar with his music, or someone not listening with a critical ear, would think that it was a passable if mostly unremarkable release. In other words, it's boring and forgettable. I suppose that is actually the most damning offense of Nocturama. For an artist like Nick Cave, whose albums are frequently among the best of the year every time he comes out with one, each having a unique feel and character all its own, it's the gravest sin to record something that is below average and has no personality to it. The slow ballad tracks, such as 'Still In Love' and 'Right Out Of Your Hand', sound like the microwaved leftovers and C-sides (yes, I meant to type C-sides) from No More Shall We Part, lacking all of its dramatic delivery, novel-like lyrical sketches, and superb arrangements. Meanwhile, the tougher tracks suffer from artificially induced energy and come off as a Nick Cave cover band playing their original material that was “inspired by” the artist they're covering. 'Bring It On' is an unimpeachably lame track by Cave's normal standards, the neutered sound of the instruments due either to non-sympathetic production or apathy. Worst of all, it's hard to believe that the man who kicked our asses with 'Stagger Lee' and 'O'Malley's Bar' could turn in pretenders-to-the-throne like 'Dead Man In My Bed' and 'Babe, I'm On Fire', the latter of which, at almost 15 minutes long, could be half that length and still feel like an eternal, overly repetitive, and ultimately failed attempt to give the album an epic and forceful finale.

To say that most of the lyrics on Nocturama are among Cave's weakest is an understatement. The slightness of 'There Is A Town' and the beaten-like-a-dead-horse obviousness of the metaphor of 'Rock Of Gibraltar' (his/their love is as strong as the titular rock, maaaan!) are all signs of an artist raiding the dregs of his notebook. To be fair, there are some good lines and imagery here and there, such as in 'She Passed By My Window' and 'He Wants You', but they're surrounded by lazy rhymes and cliched sentiments.

It all comes back to the fact that this is Cave's most generic and listless sounding album, lyrically and musically. Even people who like Nocturama, or merely think it's average, would be hard pressed to argue its merits over almost any of the rest of Nick Cave's albums. Assuming you were standing inside his discography, you could throw a rock forwards or backwards, at any distance, and hit something that is more worth your time and money thanNocturama.

2 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Album of the Week: Nick Cave- No More Shall We Part

It's strange how I often don't notice the lyrics of a song on the first listen. As a writer, you'd think it was what primarily interested me in music, but that's not really the case. Sure, I eventually notice the lyrics on the second or third spin, but music has an ability to communicate meaning and/or narrative without having to state it explicitly.

On No More Shall We Part, Nick Cave has a way of writing songs that function as vivid short stories, most of the narrative contained in the lyrics. The rest of the 'story' is told through the music in an implicit, abstract way. And that is where this sort of album goes from merely great to excellent. There's something about the way the music clings to Cave's songs that fills in the rest of the details. 'Hallelujah' has Warren Ellis's mournful violin floating above the action, putting an image of an overcast dreary day in my head as Cave goes for a walk and tells us what he's thinking. 'God Is In The House' sounds like it was recorded in a church, Cave bellowing to the congregation about suburban hypocrisy and concepts of safety; the timbre of the piano reminds me of old, slightly out-of-tune pianos you hear in so many country churches across the country. And then there's that magic moment where he starts whispering to you as if he's right there...

No More Shall We Part is a classicist's singer/songwriter album through and through (though Cave gives his own unique impassioned spin on the whole thing). It's full of stories and scenes. No song is shorter than four minutes and the entire thing finally draws to a close 67 minutes after starting. Every time I listen to this album I feel like I should be sitting in the dark with candles lit, drinking a bottle of red wine and staring out the window. It's the style of album that people who flirt with the singer/songwriter genre make midway or late into their career where they simply record a bunch of great songs; slow, sad, majestic, introspective songs. They don't worry about whether the album is too long or too plodding or doesn't have a hit single. No More Shall We Part may be mostly slow songs, but its deliberate pace and thoughtful songwriting is the point entirely, what makes it so fantastic.

Nick Cave's career is far too varied (and mostly unfamiliar to me) to easily pigeonhole, but this is without a doubt the best of his singer/songwriter leaning albums, an exquisitely poetic collection of story-songs and song-stories. No More Shall We Part may be a tad overlong, it may drag in places and have poor pacing...but it's a classic in its own right. Pop open a bottle of wine, light some candles, and get ready to stare out the window...