And The Ass Saw The Angel

This record consists of two distinct parts: the first features Nick Cave reading four excerpts from his William Faulkner-inspired, Southern-gothic novel, AND THE ASS SAW THE ANGEL, while the second is 35 minutes of music commissioned for a stage adaptation of the novel. The excerpts originally appeared on a bonus disc given away with Cave's 1988 album, TENDER PREY.
Cave's reading is very careful and deliberate, his voice reverberating and very occasionally verging on singing. Each of the read excerpts features minimal backing: the first with a stately, morose piano and harmonica; the second sports a sick, barreling barroom piano; and the third and fourth are less music and more the creepy chattering of rasping metal. The theatre music is mostly instrumental, the only vocals are provided by Katy Beale on "Cosey's Lullaby" and "Beth's Sleepy River". It varies from the fairly straight-forward, if monumentally grim, intonation of tracks like "Sleepy River Piano" and "Sanctum" to the ambient industrial rattle of "Pa's Traps" and the genuinely distressing "Euchrid on the Run", with a stop along the way at sinister gospel (see "Angels"). A must for Cave fanatics, AND THE ASS SAW THE ANGEL makes perfect accompaniment to reading the novel.|