Book Review
Jun. 20th, 2013 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariThe Art of Nick Cave: New Critical Essays
Edited by John H. Baker
I am a big fan of Nick Cave's work, so it pains me to say that this book of essays was overall, quite disappointing. While several of the essays are interesting and provide useful insights into Cave's work, this book really suffers from a pervasive neglect of Cave's music. Even though most of the essays focus on Cave's songs, they discuss the musical features or elements of these songs only fleetingly and superficially if at all. Instead, the authors focus entirely on the lyrics as texts, as if they are discussing poems. This often made the essays' arguments about the songs' construction and meaning extremely weak. Even when the textual analysis was strong and perceptive, it would have been immeasurably strengthened by incorporating the musical aspects. Thus, unsurprisingly, The Art of Nick Cave was at its strongest when discussing his work on the films of John Hillcoat.
Here are some highlights and lowlights among the individual essays:
Into My Arms:Themes of Desire and Spirituality in The Boatman's Call - Peter Billingham
This essay was the worst offender when it came to a lack of attention to musical matters undermining the argument. Billingham posits that The Boatman's Call is a song cycle with a clear progression from one state to another. Yet he only looks at the lyrics, and never once addresses harmonic or motivic relationships among the songs. This completely undermined his thesis - I just don't think one can prove that a group of songs is a cycle without evidence of musical relationships in addition to textual links. For the record, I am not convinced by the text-based argument, either. I know this album well, and I just don't see it.
Executioner Style: Nick Cave and the Murder Ballad Tradition - Nick Groom
This was one of the best essays in the book. Groom does an excellent job of connecting Murder Ballads to the ballad tradition and its bloodier manifestations. Groom adeptly compares Cave's songs to traditional material, bringing out parallels and departures, and even provides the source material for some of Cave's songs.
People Just Ain't No Good: Nick Cave's Noir Western, The Proposition - William Verrone
This was a very good, detailed, and insightful examination of how The Proposition fits into and diverges from both typical westerns and revisionist westerns. Verrone pays a lot of attention to the way Australian setting and context affect the film's approach to the genre. His exploration of the film's themes as they relate to the typical genre concerns is particularly good. The only real problem with this essay is its unfortunate neglect of The Proposition's only female character, Martha. Verrone pretty much leaves her out of the discussion, making statements like "... the characters in the film really have no moral compass...", completely discounting Martha (who is not a minor character), of whom this is distinctly not true.
The Time of Our Great Undoing: Love, Madness, Catastrophe and the Secret Afterlife of Romanticism in Nick Cave's Love Songs - Steven Barfield
I quite liked this essay's examination of the complexity of Cave's approach to love and love songs. Barfield's analysis of "Where Do We go But Nowhere" was especially great - he delved into all the ambiguities and mysteries of the song's narratives and did not offer simple answers for any of it. The discussion of "Straight to You" is similarly nuanced. Of all the essays in the book, I think this was the one I learned the most from.
(As and aside, the essay by Fred Botting which concludes the book was one of the worst pieces of impenetrable academic bullshit I've ever read. I couldn't even finish it. I can't fathom why it's in there, and I am not factoring it into my overall assessment of this book.)
Edited by John H. Baker
I am a big fan of Nick Cave's work, so it pains me to say that this book of essays was overall, quite disappointing. While several of the essays are interesting and provide useful insights into Cave's work, this book really suffers from a pervasive neglect of Cave's music. Even though most of the essays focus on Cave's songs, they discuss the musical features or elements of these songs only fleetingly and superficially if at all. Instead, the authors focus entirely on the lyrics as texts, as if they are discussing poems. This often made the essays' arguments about the songs' construction and meaning extremely weak. Even when the textual analysis was strong and perceptive, it would have been immeasurably strengthened by incorporating the musical aspects. Thus, unsurprisingly, The Art of Nick Cave was at its strongest when discussing his work on the films of John Hillcoat.
Here are some highlights and lowlights among the individual essays:
Into My Arms:Themes of Desire and Spirituality in The Boatman's Call - Peter Billingham
This essay was the worst offender when it came to a lack of attention to musical matters undermining the argument. Billingham posits that The Boatman's Call is a song cycle with a clear progression from one state to another. Yet he only looks at the lyrics, and never once addresses harmonic or motivic relationships among the songs. This completely undermined his thesis - I just don't think one can prove that a group of songs is a cycle without evidence of musical relationships in addition to textual links. For the record, I am not convinced by the text-based argument, either. I know this album well, and I just don't see it.
Executioner Style: Nick Cave and the Murder Ballad Tradition - Nick Groom
This was one of the best essays in the book. Groom does an excellent job of connecting Murder Ballads to the ballad tradition and its bloodier manifestations. Groom adeptly compares Cave's songs to traditional material, bringing out parallels and departures, and even provides the source material for some of Cave's songs.
People Just Ain't No Good: Nick Cave's Noir Western, The Proposition - William Verrone
This was a very good, detailed, and insightful examination of how The Proposition fits into and diverges from both typical westerns and revisionist westerns. Verrone pays a lot of attention to the way Australian setting and context affect the film's approach to the genre. His exploration of the film's themes as they relate to the typical genre concerns is particularly good. The only real problem with this essay is its unfortunate neglect of The Proposition's only female character, Martha. Verrone pretty much leaves her out of the discussion, making statements like "... the characters in the film really have no moral compass...", completely discounting Martha (who is not a minor character), of whom this is distinctly not true.
The Time of Our Great Undoing: Love, Madness, Catastrophe and the Secret Afterlife of Romanticism in Nick Cave's Love Songs - Steven Barfield
I quite liked this essay's examination of the complexity of Cave's approach to love and love songs. Barfield's analysis of "Where Do We go But Nowhere" was especially great - he delved into all the ambiguities and mysteries of the song's narratives and did not offer simple answers for any of it. The discussion of "Straight to You" is similarly nuanced. Of all the essays in the book, I think this was the one I learned the most from.
(As and aside, the essay by Fred Botting which concludes the book was one of the worst pieces of impenetrable academic bullshit I've ever read. I couldn't even finish it. I can't fathom why it's in there, and I am not factoring it into my overall assessment of this book.)
