Nick Cave once named the 1986 release his favourite Bad Seeds album, while Mick Harvey regarded the sessions as the moment the band found its musical identity. Forty years on, Your Funeral… My Trial remains one of the defining records of Nick Cave’s early career.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds released Your Funeral… My Trial on 3 November 1986, a record that marked a significant turning point in the band’s development and established a musical direction that would influence much of their work over the following decades. Originally issued as a double EP, the release became the band’s fourth studio album and remains one of the records Nick Cave has spoken about with particular affection.
Cave has previously described Your Funeral… My Trial as his favourite Bad Seeds album. Reflecting on the record in 1993, he said, “my favourite of the records we’ve done,” recalling that “a lot of amazing things happened, musically, in the studio.”
He also singled out three songs, “The Carny”, “Your Funeral My Trial” and “Stranger Than Kindness”, describing them as “just about perfect as we can get really.”
That assessment is significant because Your Funeral… My Trial captures the Bad Seeds moving beyond the more exploratory approach of their earlier recordings towards a more considered, atmospheric and musically cohesive sound.
The album followed Kicking Against the Pricks, released earlier in 1986, a collection built around interpretations of songs by other writers. Your Funeral… My Trial returned the focus to original material, with Cave’s increasingly distinctive songwriting placed at the centre of a band developing its own musical language.
The recording sessions took place during July and August 1986 at Hansa Tonstudio in West Berlin and Strongroom in London. Flood and Tony Cohen shared production duties, with the sessions producing some of the most distinctive recordings in the band’s early catalogue.
One of the most unusual sounds came from Mick Harvey’s improvised piano instrument.
Producer Flood later recalled Harvey arriving on the opening day with the internal workings of an old grand piano, essentially the strings attached to a metal frame. Harvey tuned selected notes and played them using a guitar plectrum.
The resulting sound became the foundation of “The Carny”, an eight-minute composition that remains one of the album’s defining recordings.
“The Carny” is an extraordinary piece of storytelling, built around a travelling circus, an abandoned carnival and a mysterious central character. Its arrangement creates an unsettling atmosphere that complements Cave’s narrative, establishing a cinematic quality that became increasingly important to his songwriting.
Mick Harvey later reflected on the significance of the sessions, explaining in 2020 that the album “gave us the template to go forward with.”
He described the recordings as organised rather than rambling, adding that despite the variety of sounds and styles, the record felt complete.
“It felt like it belonged to us. It sounded like The Bad Seeds,” Harvey said.
That observation goes to the heart of the album’s importance. The Bad Seeds had already established themselves as an unconventional musical force, but Your Funeral… My Trial brought together their disparate influences in a way that gave the group a recognisable identity.
The recording lineup featured Cave on vocals, piano, Hammond organ and harmonica, Harvey on bass, guitar, drums, piano, organ, glockenspiel and xylophone, Blixa Bargeld on guitar and co-lead vocals on “The Carny”, Thomas Wydler on drums and Barry Adamson on bass on selected tracks.
The album was also the last Bad Seeds studio release to feature Adamson until his return for 2013’s Push The Sky Away.
Bargeld and Harvey were particularly important to the record’s musical character. Their contributions gave the arrangements an unpredictable edge, balancing the atmospheric passages with moments of considerable intensity.
Cave’s songwriting was also becoming more focused on character, narrative and emotional dislocation. The album’s material has frequently been considered in the context of his heroin addiction during this period, although its musical and lyrical qualities extend well beyond that biographical background.
The original vinyl release was presented as a double EP, with eight tracks divided across the two discs. The CD edition subsequently rearranged the running order and included “Scum”, which had previously appeared as a standalone single.
The album also found an audience beyond its initial release. It became the band’s first appearance in the Australian album charts, reaching number 98 in the ARIA Top 100, and topped the UK Independent Albums Chart.
Its visual and musical character attracted the attention of filmmaker Wim Wenders. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds performed “The Carny” and “From Her To Eternity” in Wenders’ 1987 film Der Himmel über Berlin, internationally released as Wings Of Desire.
“The Carny” would find another life in animation. In 2003, director Marc Craste used the song as the inspiration for the BAFTA-winning animated short Jo Jo In The Stars. Craste described Cave’s lyrics as reading like a short story, providing the basis for a visual interpretation of the narrative.
In 2009, Your Funeral… My Trial was remastered and reissued as a collector’s edition CD/DVD package. The release restored the original vinyl running order, with “Scum” included as a bonus track on the DVD.
The eight original tracks demonstrate the range of Cave’s writing at the time. “Stranger Than Kindness” was co-written with Anita Lane and Blixa Bargeld, while “Jack’s Shadow” carries a songwriting credit for Cave and Harvey. “Long Time Man” is a version of the song written by Tim Rose.
Forty years later, Your Funeral… My Trial occupies an important position in the development of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It was a record that brought greater discipline to their experimentation without sacrificing the darkness, unpredictability and unconventional arrangements that had distinguished the group from the beginning.
Cave’s own description of the album as his favourite remains one of the strongest endorsements of its place in the catalogue. Harvey’s recollection provides the other important perspective: this was the point at which the band began to sound unmistakably like itself.
Your Funeral… My Trial was more than another early Bad Seeds release. It was the record that gave the band a musical template they could continue to develop for decades.
Your Funeral… My Trial – Original Vinyl Tracklisting
Sad Waters – 5:00
The Carny – 8:01
Your Funeral My Trial – 3:56
Stranger Than Kindness (Anita Lane, Blixa Bargeld) – 4:47
Jack’s Shadow (Nick Cave, Mick Harvey) – 5:41
Hard On For Love – 5:19
She Fell Away – 4:30
Long Time Man (Tim Rose) – 5:35
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