Released on 3 June 1985 "The firstborn Is Dead" was the second studio album by Australian rock outfit Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Produced by the band and Flood, the album saw lead vocalist Nick Cave continue his fascination with the Southern United States, featuring references to Elvis Presley and bluesmen like Blind Lemon Jefferson. The album spawned the single "Tupelo".
The album was recorded in the Hansa Studios in Berlin, Germany. Cave later said of the album, "Berlin gave us the freedom and encouragement to do whatever we wanted. We'd lived in London
for three years and it seemed that if you stuck your head out of the
box, people were pretty quick to knock it back in. Particularly if you
were Australian. When we came to Berlin it was the opposite. People saw
us as some kind of force rather than a kind of whacky novelty act.
It was a curious album since the beginning, think about that The Birthday Party had certain fascination with blued music, so it wasn't a huge surprise to think about this, and to hear and see Nick Cave embraced the
sound and feeling of rural blues on his second album with the Bad Seeds, "The Firstborn Is Dead." What was startling was how well Cave and his bandmates -- Barry Adamson, Mick Harvey, and Blixa Bargeld were able to absorb and honor the influences of artists like Skip James and Charley Patton
while creating a sound on their own.
The moody
obsessions of rural blues, trains, floods, imprisonment, sin, fear,
and death, seemed made to order for Cave, and he was able to tap into
the doomy iconography of this music with potent emotional force; on the single "Tupelo," he makes a sweeping and disturbing epic of the rain-swept
night when Elvis Presley
was born, and then on "Knocking on Joe" is a tale of life on the work gang that
communicates the pain of the spirit as clearly as the ache of the body.
Also, the blues helped transform Cave's music as well as his lyrics;
the brutal sonic pummel of the Birthday Party
here gave way to a more subtle and dynamic approach that still made
effective use of dissonance and bare-wired electric guitar noise while
proving the balance of loud and soft only made each side deeper and more
resonant.
The Firstborn Is Dead proved Nick Cave's musical palete was
significantly broader than his debut album suggested and pointed to a
path channeling the sounds and emotions of American roots music, he
would return to on many of his albums that followed, eschewing elaborate guitar
sections typical for modern blues, Cave & Company rely more on
doleful choirs (reminescent of train and prison songs, as in "Black Crow
King", simple guitar, thumping but spare drumming and powerful bass "Tupelo". Piano and organ are even
more present than on the first record, not much taking absolute control as in the later releases, but used rather to introduce both
melancholic and soulful atmosphere as evidenced in one of the best
tracks on the album, "Knocking on Joe".
Cave again explores the
nature of relationships going astray, compulsively traversing the mazes
of desire, loss and lust. His songs are coated with thick biblical
imagery. The band pays hommage to rural blues and host of outstanding
musicians that created it Skip James, Robert Johnson or Blind Lemon
Jefferson.
The album's name was a reference to Jesse Garon Presley, the stillborn identical twin of Elvis Presley. Considered a highlight point on Nick and his band career due its mournfully authentic blue lines of harmonica and guitar, journeys
through a mythical southern reality heavy on train wrecks, suicides,
prison life, and big black crows. Here was Cave's concept of America that has been
peeled from the grooves of old blues and Western cowboy 78s.
The Firstborn Is Dead Track List:
1. Tupelo
2. Say Goodbye To The Little Girl Tree
3. Train Long-Suffering
4. Black Crow King
5. Knockin' On Joe
6. Wanted Man
7. Blind Lemon Jefferson
