Nick Cave on the Fragility of Life | The New Yorker

The singer-songwriter believes that we are deeply flawed, impermanent creatures who can sometimes do extraordinary things.

Save this story Save this story Since the late nineteen-seventies, the Australian musician Nick Cave has given voice to our gnarliest impulses and fears. As a founding member of the cacophonous post-punk band the Birthday Party, he sang of sexual perversions and violent reveries in a dank baritone, a misfit visionary in the spirit of Tom Waits , Alan Vega , and Iggy Pop . (In 1981, “ Release the Bats ,” one of the band’s first singles—“Release the bats! Release the bats! Pump them up and explode the things!”—was declared Song of the Year by the BBC broadcaster John Peel.) In 1983, Cave formed

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