Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Influences: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Papa Won't Leave You, Henry


Around the same time that I was starting to discover the work of Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits, I also came upon Henry's Dream, by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and it was one of the collections that changed my life. "Papa Won't Leave You, Henry" was a particularly pivotal song where I had to listen to it again and again, learning from its dark stylings, tempo, and lyrical technique to evoke a phantasmagorical landscape that was everywhere and nowhere at once. We had a story and a world in just under 6 minutes. It does things so few songs or stories can do today. Many of the other songs in this album achieved the same effect, and I was hooked for life.

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