Nick Cave

The narrative art that Cave had begun to master in the later days of The Birthday Party flourishes on From Her To Eternity, in the sick humour of 'Wings Off Flies' (in which a lovesick protagonist plays 'she loves me, she loves me not' with an unfortunate insect), and 'A Box For Black Paul' (an examination of whose demise could possibly be interpreted as a funeral inquest for The Birthday Party), and the cautionary Mississippi tale of 'Saint Huck' who 'trades in the mighty Old Man River/ For the Dirty Old Man Latrine'.

Cave had first explored an American South of the imagination in 'Swampland'; but if some lyrics showed Cave the Wild Colonial Boy in a psycho-geographic realm that had previously intrigued other non-Southerners (for example, Canadians Neil Young and the Band's Robbie Robertson), musically From Her to Eternity sounded like nothing ever heard hitherto.

Blixa Bargeld (recruited from the Berlin experimentalists Einstürzende Neubauten, who were more associated with chains and pneumatic drills than conventional instruments) plays the guitar like someone who had never seen this strange six-string thing before. "I don't really think he knows how to play in the conventional sense at all," Cave enthused at the time, "he just makes these incredible sounds". Mick Harvey's unique abilities as an arranger sculpted the sound into something that was as expressive as it was violent.

Each deluxe double-disc collectors edition contains the remastered stereo album, the new surround mix (5.1 dvd), a specially commissioned short film made by acclaimed UK artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard plus the b-sides from the singles and exclusive sleeve notes.