The 1971 album Nick Cave will remember forever: “It gave me a lot of energy”
While a number of his works have been written with the intention of being morbid or shocking, what Nick Cave has always managed to do is strike a balance with his ability to inject pure emotional resonance in equal measure.
This is, of course, nothing unusual for an artist to do, and plenty of accomplished songwriters over the years have made it their objective to produce works that people can connect with on an emotional level. Cave is not unique in this respect, but the way in which he chooses to employ this device is what enables his work to be set apart from what so many of his contemporaries do.
A large part of creating art is to get the audience to feel something, and whether this comes in the form of creating a deep discomfort or passing on the knowledge that someone else is going through the same struggles as the listener, Cave’s work has always managed to achieve this. Whatever style or guise he’s working within, and there have been many different identities that he’s chosen to adopt over the years, you can be sure that he’s made something that people can connect with.
It might seem like an innate thing for him to write in this manner, and while he’s evidently been employing this tactic since he first started making music with The Birthday Party in the late 1970s, he wasn’t always enamoured by music of a darker nature. Gradually over time, his works have become more centred around grief and despair rather than creating stories that are sinister and macabre, but either way, this all comes from one of his major influences.
A large amount of his musical DNA stems from one of his first musical loves, and during an interview on French television in 1994, he proclaimed that discovering Leonard Cohen during his adolescence was a gigantic turning point in the way he perceived music and engaged with it on an emotional level.
During the interview, Cave explained that most of his early musical knowledge came as a result of listening to the records his older brother owned, but he proudly stated that his introduction to Cohen came about in a different manner. “Leonard Cohen was the first one I discovered by myself,” he stated. “He is the symbol of my musical independence.”
Speaking further on how transfixed he was by Cohen’s emotive work, he said how he distinctly recalled the first album of his that he ever heard, and how, despite his peers not understanding its significance, he was immediately hooked. “I remember these other guys that came to my friend’s house that thought Songs of Love and Hate was too depressing,” he added. “I’ve realised that this ‘depression’ theory was ridiculous.”
Cave argued further that he found a great source of endless inspiration from Cohen’s ability to convey a certain sadness, but that he didn’t absorb that emotion in the same way that others might. “It gave me a lot of energy,” Cave remarked. “I always remember all this when someone says that my records are morbid or depressing.”
While there is an obvious air of this morbid and depressing mood present in both their works, it’s clear that the intent goes way beyond simply looking to make the listener feel down and out, and if you care to spend any time deeply investing yourself in the worlds that they create, you’ll realise there’s a beauty to the despondency that they both write with.
