Mick Harvey / Sketches From The Book Of The Dead

Mick Harvey
Sketches From The Book Of The Dead
(Mute)
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For his first fully self penned album, former Bad Seed Mick Harvey brings a suite of songs themed around recollections of the dead. This may seem touchy material for an artist at any stage of their career, but not so, seemingly, for this old hand. It’s a collection which easily equals the Bad Seeds masterpiece ‘The Boatman’s Call’, with stirring, elegiac music a palliative to the record’s themes of darkness and doubt.

Opener ‘October Boy’ sets a folky and lonesome tone, with Harvey cast as the lone singer on the line in the manner of Johnny Cash or Leonard Cohen. Slowly recounting matter of fact details of a friend’s life which ended prematurely, the mood shifts from wryness to doubt as Harvey questions whether he'd left things unsaid.

Such slips from certainty provide the drama. On ‘The Ballad of Jay Givens’ a vicar friend of his father’s who had some strange connections about which “no one knew the score” now lies “forgotten, pointless, dumb” and dead by his own hand. Later on ‘That’s All, Paul’ a reckless suburban driver takes his story with him.

The lush, pastoral ‘A Place Of Passion’ ends on a questioning middle note as if to suggest the story is open-ended, but Harvey's record, which illuminates dark places through the medium of personal drama, is complete in a very universal, affecting way.