Album Review: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Your Funeral... My Trial

Your Funeral... My Trial was Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' second album of 1986.  At this point Cave had discovered the Hammond organ, and he uses it to great effect on 3 fairly slow tracks (the Your Funeral side).  Opener Sad Waters, sees Cave duetting with himself (singing and speaking) on a deep, mellifluous ballad, far from his usual fire and brimstone.  The title track is a very early version of the 'Nick Cave brooding ballad', inventing a genre of its own.  Finally, the creepy, unsettling Stranger Than Kindness, darkens the mood, with restrained, rumbling guitar lines and the merest hint of organ.

The rest of album is more standard issue Cave and the Bad Seeds; the death march of The Carny, the zaniness of Hard On For Love and the epic finale of Tim Rose's Long Time Man.   While Jack's Shadow is very much a quintessential Cave track, special mention must go to She Fell Away which takes an early Johnny Cash groove to feature not only xylophone courtesy of Mick Harvey, but also Thomas Wydler on fire extinguisher!