Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - Tupelo

It starts with a crack of thunder and an ominous bass pulse.  The voice of a mad preacher cuts through the air with protestations of doom.  A guitar shimmers and twists in and out of hearing.  That black rain comes down.


Tupelo is one of the greatest songs ever recorded.  Nick Cave is one of the most incredibly talented songwriters alive and nowhere is the sense of portentious doom he's capable of creating more in evidence than here.

It's almost hypnotic in it's simplicity.  A two chord pulsing beast, the most instantly memorable portion is that bassline, which thrums hauntingly between the track.  It's accompanied by eerie, tribal sounding drums, following the bassline.  Clouds of rain and cracks of thunder shadow the arrangement.  Periodically a guitar, playing a pattern that might almost be funky in a completely different song, enters the song.  That's pretty much it.  These elements build in intensity throughout the song, turning from a quiet pulse, into an apocalyptic pounding.


Vocally Cave has never been on better form.  His voice whips and howls through the wind and rain like a mad street preacher.  He preaches apocalyptic warning, hissing and raving about black rain, clapboard shacks with roofs of tin, dead children and streets which become rivers in the face of the flood.

Lyrically, the track portrays Elvis as the second coming, but certainly not in a good way.  This is the song of a dark messiah, come to bring the end in the time of doom.  The combining of the biblical imagery, the insane street preacher vocal style and the bizarre details of Elvis's birth (he was indeed born immediately before a flood struck his hometown) makes for a terrifying image.

It's a haunting song, only broken by the beauty of the occasional chord shift and harmonious backing vocals, but even then Cave's mad Preacher howls over the top of it.

The song reaches it's intense, glorious peak and within moments is gone with one final, intense smash of drums.  Then there's only the rain and the sense of oncoming doom the song leaves you with.  A masterpiece.

Posted in: Music, Music Review, Nick Cave, The Bad Seeds, Tupelo