Its been 3 weeks I’ve had of and ample opportunity for exploring this fine land of New Zealand on a road trip with a tent, my family a card and a CD player. On continuous cycle has been Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – No More Shall We Part and more accurately the song Oh My Lord.

I wanted to explore why the song has had such a profound effect on me so first of all let me share it with you then I’ll Analise the lyrics and explore it like the old days when I was at university poring over the script and cinematography of a film a painting or sculpture.

I thought I’d take a walk today
It’s a mistake I sometimes make

Seam a simple enough premise and already sets the scene that things are not quite as they should be, why should taking a walk be a mistake, what wrong with taking a walk?

My kids lay asleep in bed
My wife lay wide-awake

Nice so he is a family man, who’s wife shares his troubles, somethings not quite right here is it?

Kissed her softly on the brow
Tried not to make a sound
But with stony eyes she looked at me
And gently squeezed my hand

Now that’s familiar, a caring picture with some unspoken and intense tension, the kids are sheltered fromit through dutiful love but something is rotten in the state of Denmark

Call it a premonition, call it a crazy vision
Call it intuition, or something learned from mother

Nice, covering of confused faiths and influences in the metaphysical, psychological or just plain confused, conjuring the state of mind that often accompanies times of immense psychological stress in a persons life that lets us know we are living and not just cruising.

But when she looked up at me, I could clearly see
The Sword of Damocles hanging directly above her

Oh nice reference I must admit I had to look up what The Sword of Damocles was and I eel a bit more literary as a result so I like feeling a bot more clever then I was 5 minutes ago, but what interests me is why its above her not him?

Oh Lord
Oh my Lord
Oh Lord
How have I offended thee?
Wrap your tender arms around me
Oh Lord
Oh Lord
Oh My Lord

What a chorus that sings of a relationship with God that has a faith but a questioning one, a reference to Christ on the cross, a feeling of martyrdom that we all must feel when the winds appear to conspire against us and challenge our very faith in a fairness and justice. A standing eye to eye with the divine and asking for love, forgiveness and incite into what was his crime for which he is being punished.

They called at me through the fence
They were not making any sense
They claimed that I’d lost the plot
Kept saying that I was not
The man I used to be

A separation from his fellow man a trail of accusation that is not comprehended by the protagonist almost Kafkaesque, and reminiscent of anyone who has evolved in a different direction from his peers and environment to be accused of being a madman.

They held their babes aloft
Threw marsh mellows at the Security
And said that I’d grown soft

This made me chuckle in its absurd poetry, I only hope that there is some truth in a person deciding to illustrate there beliefs that a person had grown soft by throwing marsh mellows at security guards as it would restore my faith that creative imagination and humor is alive and kicking in protest.

Call it intuition, call it a creeping suspicion,
But their words of derision meant they hardly knew me
For even I could see, the way they stared at me
The Spear of Destiny are sticking right through me

Nice bit of echoing from a previous image in the song and the use of classical references to weapons as signifier fro impending doom and torment. The cleverness of that nearly obscures the Rhetoric of the song though about the words of derision being a signifier of ignorance in the minds of those uttering the derisive sounds

Now I’m at the hairdresser’s
People watch me as they move past
A guy wearing plastic antlers
Presses his bum against the glass

The hairdressers brings to mind up an image of a man who is both trying to piece together some semblance of normality and to some extent call also portray a man looking to change his appearance and escape from his normality, I’ve not quite fallen on either conclusion yet. The Bum and plastic antlers creates and image of some perverse modern plastic Hieronymus Bosch vision.

Now I’m down on my hands and knees
And it’s so fucking hot!

Now there is the venom, the reduction to breaking point in body, mind and soul, gone are the literary references and in with the cussing, a man broken and prostrate despair in the grips of a hell on earth.

Someone cries, “What are you looking for?”
I scream, “The plot, the plot!”

The questioner is unidentified and irrelevant, the joke of being on hands and knees searching for a physical manifestation of a nonphysical entity further enhances the sense of despair.

I grab my telephone, I call my wife at home
She screams, “Leave us alone!” I say “Hey, it’s only me”

The confusion and crisis has turned the knife in the relationship between these two and in there confusion they have started to attack each other, but I suspect only because they are in constant fight and not for the sake of it in itself.

The hairdresser with his scissors, he holds up the mirror
I look back and shiver; I can’t even believe what I can see

The protagonist has started absorbing the self doubt and see’s the monster he has become, more likely as a result of the accusations in them selves rather then as a result of what the accusations where in response to. Made even more violent with the picture of the scissors in the hairdressers hand.

Be mindful of the prayers you send
Pray hard but to pray with care
For the tears you are crying now
Are just your answered prayers
The ladders of life we scale merrily
Move mysteriously around
So that when you think you’re climbing up, man
In fact you’re climbing down

How beautiful is that? How true, how insightful.

Into the hollows of glamour, o where the spike and hammer
With telescopic camera, they chose to turn the screw

To me it paints the picture of a crooked post industrialist machine of propaganda creating and destroying celebrity for its own cruel ends and exactly why I will not entertain the thought of those sensationalist gossip magazines and such dirge in my home or near my children, but thats another discussion.

Oh I hate them, Ma!
Oh I hate them, Pa!
Oh I hate them all!
For what they went and done to you

As would any man who had had harm done to his mother and father as collateral damage in a needless attack on a man.

All this now builds into a crescendo of maddening violin, piano, guitar and drums that enforces the emotional aesthetic of the piece.

Not to some credited as one of Mr Caves best pieces but I think its probably one of his most perfect pieces of story telling shy of the ‘Murder Ballads’. Incredibly cinematic and whole.

I love it.