I try to reserve this weekly spot for something new, but I have to be true to the tune that moved me the most that week. And there is no question that this was it.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, "Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!" (2008)

find it on Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!

A friend of mine has a favorite question: what strikes you most when you first hear a song, the music or the lyrics? I'm a music man, but only because lyrics take longer to unearth. But when the words are gems, they can end up creating hooks that are more haunting than any melody.

And this is where I've found myself in the last two weeks with "Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!": haunted. I've been an insane man for it the last couple of weeks, with lines just on the tip of my tongue, and only a tenuous hold on social normality keeping them repeated in my head instead of muttered out loud.

I'm in awe and envy of Nick Cave's blunt language. I'm usually attracted to puns and bittersweetness, not the crude force of words like Cave's, where the world is being grabbed at instead of requested.

Lazarus, 0:35: He came from New York City, man, but he couldn't take the pace. He thought it was like a dog-eat-dog world. But he went to San Francisco, spent a year in outer space with sweet little San Franciscan girl.

...where "sweet" sounds so sleazy. There's no grasping for description here. The girl is San Franciscan, and the old-fashioned cliche of "dog-eat-dog" is fine for describing New York.

Larry may be Christ, or maybe not. Maybe this is the second coming or a fact-finding mission or maybe it's just some guy. The whole song is both hinted and blatant, treading the waters of complete blasphemy and then diving deep without anyone really knowing what the hell's going on.

Lazarus, 2:38: I mean, he...he never asked to be raised up from the tomb. I mean, nobody really ever actually asked him to forsake his dreams.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, fame finally found him.

I'm addicted to those words. Completely addicted. A maybe-Christ totally losing hold in a blame game, followed shortly by fame, followed immediately by complete ruin.

And through all of it, in the one moment that strays from the main riff, the one part that dares to introduce a chord change, there's the line that takes the non-commitment of agnosticism and delivers it with the fire of complete conviction:

Well, I don't know what it is, but there's definitely something going on upstairs.

Amen.