Nick Cave and Death

Abstract

My concern is Nick Cave’s unceasing focus on death in nearly all its forms. Unlike the tendency to compartmentalize death in our (post)modern world, to sequester the elderly into compounds known as “retirement villages,” to block death through the frenzy of consuming commoditized trash, to separate death from life, and for rock singers to favor lust and love, in all its triumphs, frustrations, and disappointments, Cave is refreshingly if at times scandalously direct. In order to seek out the permutations of death in Cave’s work,¹ I will distinguish between musical form and lyrical content, overlaying that distinction with another between death inflicted and death suffered. When we come to death suffered, we also draw closer to Cave’s own perceptions of death, with myriad reflections on individual death and, even more importantly for my purposes, collective death. Yet the story is not complete without a consideration of death overcome and what that means for Cave’s own continuous search for redemption. One final introductory observation: it is usually far easier, for obvious reasons, to focus on what happens before death, on our preparation for fear and terror of death—how do we face death? What are the social mores? Is it a part of life or divorced from life? What happens after death is of course an unknown zone, although that has not prevented more than a little speculation about what might happen on the other side of the door.

What is it to be so entwined in a culture of death?