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| I done told you already, haven't I? |
This was the first of Cave's albums Ian played for me, in his Salinas apartment during what arguably could have been the worst year of my life. I sat on the floor, stoned, and the almost uniformly dulcet tones and snail's-paced rhythms took me for a slow ride down the Styx. Cave's macabre spirituality is, on his other albums, an order to take heart and a journey through his metaphysical universe (Ian called him the boatman of the Apocalypse; I said he was the court-bard of the aftermath). On The Boatman's Call, it's most often cold comfort, apparently for Cave himself and for the listener only by afterthought. The first lyrics to be heard are "I don't believe in an interventionist God..."
Later on, he invokes Kant and cries.
Cave is capable of classic-rock-style belting, but I prefer his smoky baritone. And as much as I love his occasionally wild instrumentation, there is also something to be said for the piano-bass-percussion simplicity of Boatman's Call. (Namely, that I can go downstairs right now and improvise my favorite three tracks without missing a chord.) And if the melancholy apprehension of the music against the joyous certainty of the lyrics to "Are You The One That I've Been Waiting For?" - because it's not a rhetorical question - doesn't move you, then you might be a little too confident in love.
All said and done, I'm just more in a mood for this album lately than for my other favorite, Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus.
Runner-up: Sting's Brand New Day. You've got countrified blues featuring James Taylor, a tent-revival call-and-response gospel number, and a funky jazz solo in 7/8 - and that's all in the same song! A little ambient music, some bluesy bossa nova, a lullaby, Youssou N'Dour doing the desert thing, the requisite titular single - but with an unpublicized Stevie Wonder on harmonica - and the Sting-requisite song about a prostitute...basically it's his Graceland.
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