Our little town fell into a state of shock
A lot of people were saying things that made little sense
Then the next thing you know the head of Handyman Joe
Was found in the fountain of the Mayor’s residence
Foul play can really get a small town going
La la-la-la, la la-la-lie
Even God’s children, they have to die!
The scariest drive I ever did was way back in 2002. At the time I was driving from Miami to Atlanta, and the Florida Turnpike was shut down both ways somewhere north of Orlando. As such, I checked my map (holy fudge, remember maps?) and figured I could take Route 60 across the state and sync back up at I-75 near Tampa.
And I drove the scariest freakin’ part of Florida I’d ever seen. We’re talking small towns, country roads, rusty farm equipment long since overgrown with moss and weeds, and naked children playing in puddles at a crossroad.
I had never been so happy to have a mostly full tank of gas in broad daylight, because my foot never left the gas pedal. Not if I could help it. Terrifying.
But it’s always the small, creepy towns, isn’t it?
Those allegedly nice quaint places with the white fences and the neighbor who waves and the park where all the kids play and the occasional teenage girl who likes to go out after dark and, you know, murder everyone. Because the late, great David Lynch wasn’t operating in a vacuum.
Either way, welcome to the town of Millhaven. Where the population is rapidly decreasing.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ The Curse of Millhaven isn’t so much a song so much as a gleeful blood soaked waltz spree by the most terrifyingly chipper narrator this side of Sweeney Todd.
Released on 1996’s Murder Ballads, the tune introduces us to Loretta — or “Lottie,” as her friends probably called her before she turned them into corpses. She’s sixteen, perky, green-eyed and yellow-haired, or perhaps the opposite, and maybe a touch misunderstood.
Oh yeah, and she’s been busy slaughtering practically everyone she knows.
That’s the trick of The Curse of Millhaven in all its brilliance and madness, and why this thing belongs in our Buttkickin’ Halloween canon. Cave & the Seeds delivers all the carnage and mayhem with a grin and a twirl, tearing through it like some infernal cabaret act. The band swings, the music soars, and Cave croons and cackles like a carnival barker with a body count.
The entire affair is joyous, hideous, hilarious, and about as wholesome as getting drenched with pigs blood on prom night.
Like in so many of his songs we’ve featured here like Red Right Hand, The Carny, and Henry Lee (a duet with PJ Harvey), Cave’s performance here is your expected masterclass in dark storytelling. He doesn’t moralize or explain, but rather lets Lottie do the talking, and through her disturbingly gleeful confessions we get a portrait of a small town crumbling under its own naive trust.
The music gallops along like a drunken parade, with accordion, fiddle, upright bass, all colliding in manic jubilation and you almost don’t notice how horrible it all is. At least until you catch yourself tapping your foot while she’s describing decapitations and dogs nailed to doorways and children trapped under ice and all sorts of sociopathic nogoodnik-isms.
Cave walks that tightrope better than anyone: the delightful waltz between art and atrocity. You’re not listening to horror, you’re dancing with it and singing along. Laughter and damnation ain’t all that far apart.
So yeah, The Curse of Millhaven just totally delivers the brilliantly joyful horror. Lottie is your chipper teenage sociopath waltzing through a Nick Cave fever dream, laughing all the way to the booby hatch. America’s sweetheart filtered through a bloodstained kaleidoscope.
Play The Curse of Millhaven loud and proud. Just uh… just maybe lock the door too. Lottie’s still out there somewhere. And she’s smiling.
Well, I confessed to all these crimes and they put me on trial
I was laughing when they took me away
Off to the asylum in an old black Mariah
Well it ain’t home, but you know, it’s better than jail
It ain’t such bad old place to have a home in
La la-la-la, la la-la-lie
All God’s children they all gotta die!
