From Her To Eternity (1984)

From Her To Eternity (1984)

Although it’s tempting to view the Bad Seeds as simply a continuation of the Birthday Party, that’s not quite fair to either the separate type of mangled imprecations hurled by The Birthday Party or the sound and songwriting approach toward which Nick Cave would steer this new project, which toured briefly under the name Nick Cave and the Cavemen before settling on Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Of course, Mick Harvey’s presence in the Bad Seeds right from the start suggests some Birthday Party continuity (as well as Barry Adamson, who had done a bit of recording with the Birthday Party for the Junkyard sessions), but what turns out to have been particularly momentous is the inclusion of Blixa Bargeld on guitar. Despite Harvey being primarily a guitar player, on From Her To Eternity he provides almost everything but, leaving guitar duties to Bargeld and first- (and only-) time Bad Seed Hugo Race (though Race also provided guest guitar on a few songs on Kicking Against The Pricks).

Having provided guest guitar strangling on “Mutiny In Heaven” from the final Birthday Party EP Mutiny!, Bargeld’s avant-garde credentials with his own pioneering industrial band Einsturzende Neubauten were already beyond reproach. His contributions to the album provide some of the most jarring moments, as his guitar punches in almost randomly with stabs and squeals of noise. In fact, in listening back to everything in succession, it almost seems like the more natural transition would have been from the Birthday Party’s material on Mutiny! and The Bad Seed directly into The Firstborn Is Dead. As such, From Her To Eternity feels like a fruitful aberration, as if Bargeld’s addition to the band required a more primal purging of sound before they could resume their future course.

What’s truly startling about From Her To Eternity is how masterfully the Bad Seeds put down a proper album on this, their very first attempt. Every trace of the Birthday Party’s post-punk thrashing has been completely exorcised, and while the album does its fair share of noisy carrying-on, it’s done with a much grimmer, focused intent. This much is made clear from the very outset, with the brilliant, wracked cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Avalanche.” The song replaces Cohen’s flurry of finger-picking with roiling drum rolls on the floor toms, which constantly ebb and flow, always threatening, like Cave’s voice, to spill over into overt aggression, but then pulling back just at the edge. One of the obvious highlights is the title track, which surges ceaselessly forward with its nervous, paranoid one-two-three one-two-three one-two beat, and lyrics that find Cave inhabiting perfectly a narrative mindset of obsession and raw psychosis. Likewise, “Cabin Fever!” and “Saint Huck” are always pitching forwards, stumbling at the listener with red eyes and white knuckles.

But even in the midst of this brackish morass, there is great subtlety. Though “Well Of Misery” is easiest to remember for its call-and-response, work song-like pace, with patient yet relentless percussion hits miming the hammers of a chain-gang busting rocks, Mick Harvey provides beautiful low accompaniment on vibraphone. Along with Cave’s plaintive harmonica, this song (as well as “Saint Huck,” if mostly from a lyrical standpoint) was an early indication of how much further Cave’s fascination with Americana, from Delta blues to themes of the Western frontier, would eventually travel. The ultimate death-dirge shuffle of “A Box For Black Paul” is a dust-clotted capstone to a tremendous artistic statement — “O yeah, Death favors those that favor Death.”

Although “In the Ghetto” and “The Moon Is In The Gutter” show Cave’s balladeering aspirations, keeping in mind that the album’s original seven-song LP release did not include them means that From Her To Eternity was an even more single-minded exploration of jittery rhythmic pulsation and gnawing, claustrophobic unease. The Bad Seeds would soon explore a much broader palette of sounds, and arguably with much greater sophistication and technical mastery than on From Her To Eternity. Still, for its pitch-perfect evocation of dread, existential melancholy, and arcane imagery, the album is one of Cave’s unimpeachable triumphs.