I've long thought that David's songs are characterized by a certain sense of alienation, and sometimes by a concomitant sense of aggression. Alienation and aggresssion? How can this be, one may well ask, since DN is one of the kindest, sweetest, most charming, most considerate human beings anyone has ever known? The answer to that question is, I don't know. It's ultimately between him and his muse. I'm not going to do a psychoanalytic study based on his songs alone, but I'll just lay out the evidence, by way of a (very long) thumbnail sketch that hardly breaks the surface of the deep waters:
Paul Klee, Fade to Black, Sweet Holy Grail, Blue Room, Julia. These five songs are from 66 Hoxsey Street and Live at the Iron Horse. The protagonists of SHG, Blue Room, and Julia are all loners who are "out of touch" in one way or another. Alienation is the condition of being "out of touch" in some way. In Julia, with its mention of razors by the bed, we have alienation with a hint of violence. Aggression is the human tendency to violence, an instinctive animal urge to lash out when one's perceived interests are threatened. Paul Klee, Fade to Black, and SHG are all apparently about "love gone wrong," another aspect of alienation, i.e. the state of having fallen "out of touch" with a failed love interest.
James and Boys Will Be Boys are from Bob on the Ceiling. James is another alienated loner, much like the hero William of SHG. Another loser in love? BWBB is fairly bristling with aggressive tension, which bursts out at the end of the song in one of the most amazing cathartic releases of previously pent-up aggression to be found in the Nields Canon, or anywhere else for that matter. This is Nields Mosh Pit Music in its purest and most intense form. No wonder BWBB always leaves people in a surprised state of speechless amazement.
There is another amazing cathartic moment in the Nields Canon: David's electric guitar solo in Goodnight Irene, from Abigail. It was in reference to Goodnight Irene that the Boston Herald way back in '94 referred to TN as a cross between Pete Seeger and Smashing Pumpkins. Anyone who has ever seen Katryna pour her guts out singing this song may have wondered what has possessed this otherwise sweet angel of a lead singer to "let it all hang out" like that. The urge to "jump in a river and drown" is certainly one of the darkest, most alienated, most bummed out expressions of despair in all of Nields Music. TN used to mention Kurt Cobain's suicide in song intros for Goodnight Irene. But I digress...
Bullet Proof, King of the Hill, Einstein's Daughter, Blind, Cowards, Goodbye, and All My Pretty Horses are from Gotta Get Over Greta. Bullet Proof, KOTH, Blind, and Goodbye all exhibit varying degrees of aggression. Bullet Proof, Einstein's Daughter, Blind, Cowards, and Goodbye are all about alienation, dysfunctional relationships, or "love gone wrong."
Cowards has another one of those staggeringly amazing cathartic Nields Moments, when the final refrain explodes into the power chords of the full band underlining the Twin Peaks waterfall of the sisters' singing "You kno-o-o-o-o-o-o-ow, and I! I kno-o-o-o-o-o-o-ow..." My favorite Nields Moment, unsurpassed in passion and power, with the possible exception of the explosion at the end of BWBB, which is far more harsh and not nearly so transcendently beautiful. A ticking time bomb which goes off is not nearly so beautiful as the majesty of the ocean when it overlaps its bounds and overpowers the land in a natural disaster such as a tidal wave. Beauty can kill, but love is still more powerful than hate. "Love is dangerous."
AMPH does not fit the pattern at hand. See: Innertube, Forever.
Snowman, Art of the Gun, Last Kisses, and Train, all from Play, are all cut from the same cloth of the pattern of alienation and/or aggression. Snowman is not the only song about "Frozen Love"; in Train "the sea has a frozen tide." Whereas in Snowman "there is ice where my heart should be," in Train the speaker is frozen in a dead end situation, or frozen in time. The coldness of the non-Home house in Last Kisses with the sign that says "Please Do Not Disturb" is reminiscent of the withdrawn tragic self-defeating heroes of Bullet Proof and Snowman. Jennifer Falling Down, to the extent that David co-wrote it, may also be mentioned as being about a self-defeating dysfunctional person. Nebraska, so much like the Nields Apocrypha song Be My Little Cowgirl and Home's I Still Believe In My Friends (musically, that is), is far more negative and alienated than those other last two named songs.
Innertube, like AMPH and Forever, breaks the mold. This wistful side of DN would require a whole 'nother post altogether.
David Nields *didn't* write the really eerie and powerful Stainless Steel? It is so much like the other songs I've been describing. Although if Nerissa penned those equally forbidding songs of dysfunctional burnt-out love, namely Dictator and Waco Lake, then I suppose she could write Stainless Steel too, another creepy song about "love as addiction." And Nerissa co-wrote Blind, Bullet Proof, KOTH, Einstein's Daughter, Jennifer Falling Down, James, and Snowman too. "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water..." (Theme from "Jaws") :)
Conversely, Daddy's Little Girl is not that far off from the kind of song which Nerissa might have written... Go figure! Maybe there's a cross-pollination going on between David and Nerissa, when their creative juices get flowing? :)
Cary, come to think of it, is another one which is a lot like Nebraska: not only musically like Be My Little Cowgirl and I Still Believe In My Friends are, but also thematically, in that it tells the story of a "loser in love," who is trying to pick up the pieces of a broken dream.
Since Home has not yet been released, I'll say little about David's songs from that album, except to say that Jack the Giant Killer is reminiscent of KOTH, AOTG, and Bullet Proof among others, in some ways. Fear and loathing... Doom and gloom... What, does DN sit around listening to Richard Thompson all day, when he's not busy being a teacher, an actor, or one of the Nields?!? :)
In conclusion, IMHO, David Nields brings a razor-sharp *edge* to the Nields writing, an edge of aggression, alienation, and angst, that is cutting edge and rock and roll in my book. He gives the band so much in the way of kick and killer rock instinct, even in his slow ballads. Where would TN be without the genius and the creativity of DN?
Bruce
© 2000