"Lie Down Here and Be My Girl"(Nick Cave)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
It's not surprising that the sick mind that brought us "Red Right Hand" and "The Mercy Seat" would write "Lie Down Here and Be My Girl," which is less a romantic come-on than a threat of necrophilia. It's not a murder ballad exactly, but Cave's unleashed sexuality has a definite edge of danger in it, from the screeching guitars to his mumbled/screamed vocals.
"You're as brittle as the wishbone of a bird," he sneers at her. "We've been scribbled in the margins of a story that is patently absurd." He's turned himself into Albert Camus here--that most famous of absurdists who once said that without God there'd be nothing for man to do but fornicate and read the newspaper. But Cave doesn't have a newspaper, and his fornication is something closer to murder than lovemaking.
He's Hazel Motes' "New Christ," the blood pouring from his side as he clutches at flesh and tries to rebuild a broken world the only way he knows how. But he's not so much standing on the hood of his car as lying in the back seat of it. The message is clear: The world doesn't make sense, no matter how much you try to make it, so all that's left is sex and murder. And they're the same thing.
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