One of the reasons you should be subscribing during Subscriberthon is Anwyn Crawford’s article on Nick Cave in issue 197. As she points out, throughout 2009 Nick Cave was everywhere.

Cave now occupies a curious position in Australian culture. Rather than the Black Crow King of his own imagination, he’s more the Monarch of Middlebrow. His likeness hangs in the National Portrait Gallery; his journals displayed at the National Library. His headline appearances bankroll summer music festivals and arts festivals alike while his early solo albums have been reissued in deluxe packages. You can buy his lyrics as a Penguin paperback. He is a cover star of weekend newspaper supplements and most recently of the Monthly, that over-earnest, reliably dull bush telegraph of all that is causing mild consternation among the nation’s opinion columnists.

Crawford’s article stands out from just about everything else written about Nick Cave this year in that she brings some politics to the subject, especially on the subject of gender. She writes:

[F]or Cave … women are both far better and far worse creatures than he – but whether they’re saints or sluts he has to kill them. Over and over in his songs, Cave performs this murder. On the one hand because murder puts female perfection eternally out of reach and therefore renders it perpetually desirable, on the other because women’s particular filth – their blood and milk and mucky cavities – represents all that is most base and abject about human existence.

You can read the whole thing here. Remember, though, it’s only because of subscribers that we can publish things for free. If you haven’t already subscribed, please think about it.