Deep as I have been done
Neko Case playing murder victim on the cover of her album Furnace Room Lullaby
In response to a previous post on Nick Cave and Johnny Cash, one of our readers commented that “the emotion in Cave’s voice, along with his delivery, create a murder ballad experience which “moves” the listener to a greater degree than Cash does. To this end, I would also say that Cave provides an experience which makes the listener feel the deed.”
Something similar is to be had, I think, in the “murder ballad experience” (I love this phrase) that Neko Case creates. And, similar to Cave, Case’s body of work provides what we might call a comprehensive murder ballad experience – that is, like Cave, she’s able to move back and forth in her songs to embody the murderer, the murdered, the witness, and those who take the witness’s statement.
For example, in “Deep Red Bells,” which I consider a masterpiece, Case is clearly identifying with the victims, at least on one level.
Deep red bells, deep as I have been done
Deep red bells, deep as I have been done
Deep red bells, deep as I have been done
Deep red bells, deep as I have been done
Deep red bells, deep as I have been done
What are the bells? Who’s the “I”? One obvious answer is that the “red bells” are the victims of the Green River Killer themselves, clustered together in life, as prostitutes working the same strip of interstate, and in death, as tell-tale grisly remains clustered at the same discovery sites. (Again, the image of the Redvein enkianthus — among whose bells, leaves and stems the remains of the victims might actually have rested — is so helpful here, I think.)
Image of some of the Green River Killer’s “clusters” of victims,
printed in the Seattle Times the day after his arrest,
with each orange/red square representing a single victim.
But it’s not that simple; in fact, it gets complicated.
I’ll return to the complications of “Deep Red Bells” — the question of with whom and with what Case is identifying — later this week. For now, I’ll foreshadow that conversation by introducing Case’s other murder ballad masterpiece, “Furnace Room Lullaby.” In this haunting song, her first original murder ballad, Case plays the murderer (even as she also plays the murder victim on the album’s cover):
“Furnace Room Lullaby,” Neko Case
> lyrics
This is a gruesome tale about brutally murdering someone and then disposing of the body bit by bit under the floor boards and in the furnace, jarringly titled and sung as a lullaby. (We’ve seen somethinglike this a few times before.) It’s also the tale of one human being whose identity is forever after defined as the deep, appalling, awful deed that he (or she?) has committed against another. As the song says:
Into the beams you’ve gone
I’ve gone, you’ve goneI’m wrapped in the depths of these deeds that have made me
I can’t bring a sound from my head though I try
I can’t seem to find my way up from the basement
A demon holds my place on earth ’till I die
I’ve gone, you’ve goneI’m wrapped in the depths of these deeds that have made me
I can’t bring a sound from my head though I try
I can’t seem to find my way up from the basement
A demon holds my place on earth ’till I die
Both murderer and murdered are “gone,” both trapped forever in the basement.
The song, in part, is Case’s brilliant response to the Louvin Brothers, who helped make popular entertainment out of one of the most brutal murder ballads out there, “Knoxville Girl”:
“Knoxville Girl,” Louvin Brothers
> lyrics
“I wanted to write a murder ballad, simply because I was such a huge fan of the Louvin Brothers,” Case has said of the “Furnace Room Lullaby.” “Not that this song is anywhere as good as a Louvin Brothers song, but I tried.”
I think she succeeded and then some – what do you think? Although radically different, “Furnace Room Lullaby” captures all the elements inherent in “Knoxville Girl” – the brutality, the confession, the condemnation, the damnation, the equal parts hate and “love,” the images of an earthly prison and an encroaching eternal hell.
The iconic cover of the Louvin Brothers album Satan is Real
Of all the murder ballads out there, “Knoxville Girl” is the one that always makes my spine crawl. It’s so nonchalantly sadistic; for me there’s no interesting motive or plot to think about or discuss, just pathology. Listening to it in the context of Case’s work only intensifies the spine-crawl, but also helps me make sense of the song and why it feels the way it does to me. Case is a little disingenuous in her quote – we know from her later work, specifically “Deep Red Bells,” that she didn’t write a murder ballad “simply” because she was a huge fan of the Louvin Brothers or of the murder ballad genre. It goes deeper. She also had a specific, horrific experience in mind and in memory. (“Furnace Room Lullaby” came out roughly a year and a half before the Green River Killer was finally arrested. “Deep Red Bells” came out roughly a year after his arrest.) Could she hear a song like “Knoxville Girl,” ponder the lyrics — man repeatedly goes to town, seeks out a woman, brutally murders her, throws her in a river — and not think “Green River Killer”?
Could you?
Next up: more original ballads by Case, some great covers, and a second and third definition of the deep red bells that rang like thunder.
