The Firstborn Is Dead by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

The Firstborn Is Dead, the second album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, came out on Mute on 3 June 1985, and it's the sound of an Australian band getting lost in the American South without ever leaving Europe. They cut it at Hansa Studios in Berlin, producing with Flood, and Cave later credited the city with letting them off the leash: after three years in London, where anyone who stuck their neck out got slapped down, Berlin treated them as a force to be reckoned with.

The title points at Jesse Garon Presley, the stillborn twin of Elvis, and the whole record is steeped in that swampy mythology: Elvis references, a tip of the hat to bluesmen like Blind Lemon Jefferson, and "Tupelo" rolling in like a thunderhead. Cave preaches and moans, while Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld, Barry Adamson and Thomas Wydler grind out slow, doom-laden blues that creaks like a porch in a storm. The original vinyl ran to just 7 songs.

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