Kate Bernheimer, editor of the new anthology xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, assembles a collection of her favorite retellings of the story of Orpheus. Among them is “The Lyre of Orpheus,” the 2004 song by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, featured above:
The title song of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ 2004 double album, “Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus,” presents the myth as a twisted fairy tale, set to a languorous blues-rock tune: Orpheus builds a lyre from a block of wood and a wire, accidentally kills Eurydice when he plays it for her, and eventually falls down a well, into Hell, where he’s reunited with her. “Orpheus went leaping through the fields,” Cave sings in his baritone twang. “Strumming as hard as he did please/Birdies detonated in the sky/Bunnies dashed their brains out on the trees…” It’s the plaintive chorus—“Oh, momma! Oh, momma!”—that clinches this version for me. Cave’s music always has a particularly primal, post-human tone; its grungy, sadistic lift suits Orpheus’s predicament better than any more conventionally beautiful song could.
The Dish 