"The Boatman's Call" is a paradox. A dozen musical gems, as fragile as monumental. Perhaps this is the most accessible disc Nick Cave to speak of mainstream would the album still does not do justice. Comparable perhaps with Dylan's "Time Out of Mind", although musically quite different. "Into My Arms", the opener, is programmatic. Nick Cave is here succeeded in creating by avoiding any frills a simple image that resists the kitsch that is spiritually and down to earth. "Lime Tree Arbour" is orchestrated almost luxuriant - on "The Boatman's Call" everything is instrumented sparse, reduced to the essentials. Grandios then "People Is not No Good": here a little story of a failed love is so intricately intertwined with the loss of faith in humanity that it hurts. The intermediate part illustrates this expulsion from the inner paradise musically and lyrically simple: "To our love send a dozen white lilies / to our love Send a coffin of wood / to our love let all the pink-eyed pigeons coo / that people just ain ' t no good ". Quite different in the plant, but also monumental is "Brompton Oratory". The rhythm and chord accompaniment coming from Casio, the song connects without chorus the experience a Pentecost sermon with the loss of love: "No God up in the sky / no devil Beneath the Sea / could do the job did you did / of bringing me to my knees. " As nice as can be sad. It's almost disappointing to have to share this record.
