The Secret Life of the Love Song/The Flesh Made Word

by Stacia ProefrockThis is a stunning recording -- stunning in the sense of its quality and its combination of philosophical soliloquy and heartbreaking music. It's also stunning in its effect upon the listener, rendering him or her mute -- stunned, as it were -- with reflection and awe. Combining two spoken-word pieces, one from the Vienna Poetry Festival and one from a BBC religion program, Cave manages to flesh out the spare poetry that is his songwriting by explaining the font from which it issues. God, madness, mourning, love, and wisdom are all explored here, with musical interludes on the first piece, "The Secret Life of the Love Song," that show the end product of all of this musing. Cave's words are like silent weights that sneak up and land in your lap, paralyzing you with their beauty and heft in a way that only occasionally happens with the songs that he has issued over the last 20 years.