Okay, I’ve been given a “Nick Cave and the Bad Seed” CD along with a “Dead Can Dance” (though probably not to this) CD and told, all Goth wants to be these two bands.
While I see some similarities and, though disturbing, think the Nick Cave CD is pretty dang well written. The Dead Can Dance sounds like Enigma without the happy overtones.
So, help me, what makes music Goth? What are the stylistic, lyrical and tonal qualities that define it?
Thanks.
Well, there’s Goth and then there’s goth and then there’s goth. It covers a wide range of genres, actually. Depending on how old the goth is and when they got into being goth, you’ll get different answers.
I’d say generally it has to be either industrial in nature (Front 242 or Skinny Puppy) or dark (as in dark themes such as suicide, death in general, etc.) alternative, with some baroque-type stuff (like Dead Can Dance) also in the mix.
Goth music is whatever goths listen to. It can be post-punk (Joy Division), industrial (Laibach), metal (Type O Negative), neo-opera (Lacrimosa), or darkwave (Black Tape for a Blue Girl).
The common element is a certain darkness or sadness. I don’t know how best to describe it otherwise.
You should do a search as this topic pops up on here from time to time, i.e. origins of, styles of, types of, etc. There are whole books on the subject.
Before the Bad Seeds, Nick Cave fronted a group called the Birthday Party, which also splintered into a group called Crime and the City Solution. I would say, roughly, that Birthday Party was sort of a combination of death rock/art rock/post punk and CatCS was more in the style of goth.
As for DCD, that was back in the day when we generally refered to them as “one of those 4AD bands”, which was the label they shared with Cocteau Twins, Coil and a host of others.
Many would say that goth was/is about “lifestyle”, because so many styles of music that can be given genre names, can fit within it. Like Ghanima says, what someone says about what goth is really can sort of show their age.
I agree with these posts.
There is no one “goth” quality.
It’s more an overall sensibility with an emphasis on immersing yourself in the current feeling at hand and appreciating beauty in the grotesqueries of life.
That’s not to say all gothiness is guided by these ideas, but they are commonalities. There is plenty of death, despair, shock, drama, anxiety and black clothing, but there is also a lot of introspection, love, poetry, theater, art, existentialism and yes, joy, all mixed in.
Personally I’d say it’s a reaction/reflection to/of the horrors of life and the contrasting peace of the grave. Moribund, oh yes. Pretentious at times, definitely. A reminder to smell the roses before they wither, and even then there is profound beauty in that as well.
The music, to which it is so strongly attached, is pretty diverse and there are many sub-genres. Many of the “originators” don’t even label themselves as goth. But if you’re looking for more examples music with downward progressions and lots of reverb check out some of these early albums; Bauhaus - In The Flat Field, Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures, The Cure - Pornography, Sisters of Mercy - First, Last and Always.
Hope that helps a wee bit.
Ancient Goth: Someone who destroyed the Roman Empire.
Modern Goth: A vegan pretending to be a vampire.
I’ve never quite understood having Dead Can Dance labeled as goth, either. Their really early stuff has a more rock oriented vibe which is almost goth in nature and they have the word “Dead” in their name, but that’s about where it ends for me. It’s always seemed to me that they just have a goth following while making the music they want to make.
Granted, that description applies to many bands.
Exactly.
Before opening the thread, i said to myself, “I’ll bet someone has suggested that Dead Can Dance is a goth band.” Sure enough!
Their name nearly always comes up in discussions of Goth music and, imprecise as any definition of the term must be, no-one will ever convince me that Dead Can Dance belongs in the category.
I think it’s fairly simple - (Some) Goths listen to Dead Can Dance. Dead Can Dance is not, however, a Goth Band.
Nosferatu, there’s a Goth Band. With all that the intentional caps imply.
To expand - my local Goth cave has taken to playing Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt, and all the little Gothlings come out to dance to it with obvious, unironic enjoyment. Does this make Johnny Cash a Goth musician?
Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill gets a lot of play too. Does that make Kate a Goth?
Goths listen to… oh, a lot.
My local goth friends listened to, let’s see. The Cure. Bauhaus. Sisters of Mercy. Joy Division. Nick Cave et al. Dead Can Dance (mentioning them, I remember I have their CD with me today! Joy! Or: Woe!). Loreena McKennit. Enya. Johnny Cash. Leonard Cohen. Tom Waits. U2. Oingo Boingo. The Smiths. The Ramones. Tori Amos. Kate Bush. Nosferatu. A crapload of smaller, more niche bands I can’t remember the names of.
There isn’t a lot to tie all those bands together, but Logan 5 seems to hit it pretty hard on the head. The major undercurrent of goth-icity seems to be the same as just about any counterculture I can think of: the World Does Not Understand.
For some, it’s a yearning for a ‘better’ time – hence the archaisms and the velvet and the Celtic music. A world where you can be more than Susie Jones, Starbucks barista and Honors English student. It’s also a reveling in beauty and pleasure with the perpetual underlying understanding that all these things are temporary, that nothing is forever, and that even the fairest face will eventually be worm food. It’s very much a “gather ye rosebuds” and “nothing gold can stay” sort of lifestyle. A beautiful dead girl will always be beautiful, frozen in time like a statue, never growing old or weak. So Moulin Rouge? A movie with some very gothy sensibilities.
The one thing that goths tend to have in common is just believing that everything is rotten and transient and not worth the damn bother.
That, or it’s just an excuse to dress pretty and look pained and nibble the necks of attractive people. 
That’s a bit of a hijack into the lifestyle-style itself, but it’s good for understanding why individual songs and bands appeal to gothfolk. Just like any other group, not everyone within it agrees on what bands and songs are actually “goth” or not. It’s a bit like punks, but possibly with less kicking. Not much less, admittedly.
To me Goth music is Nine Inch Nails, Front Line Assembly, Bella Morte, Assemblage 23. Evanescence fits the definition, but I think they had their 10 minutes of commerical fame and aren’t really a factor any more. But “My Immortal” is a nice wrist-slasher.
I’ve never BEEN goth, but I could certainly deal with that last part.
I’d just like to take this oppotunity to agree with everyone, that Goth has a lot of subgenres… both the music and the look/lifestyle.
I was sort of goth for a while, but having kids, and a daytime job makes that whole lifestyle sort of hard to hold up. I still love the music, and the beauty of the imagry, but I can’t afford the clothes…
I will say that the Johnny Cash cover of hurt is Very Goth, despite the silliness of a bunch of folks doing the Gothic Line Dancing (wave arms around, sway from side to side, spin around a lot and on long drawn out notes, do a slow wave of the arm up and over the head…). The whole song is about pain, and Mr. Cash certainly gives it a gravitas that Reznor can’t seem to get quite right (imo).
I’m a huge fan of Type O Negative… haven’t caught them live, but they don’t get out here much and they’re not touring at all right now (singer is ill with mysterious illness).
My Goth music back in the day was epitomized by bands like Christian Death, Skinny Puppy, Tones on Tail and Foetus. Much louder and nastier stuff than can be considered “goth” these days, I think. While we admired other bands as well, such as Tori Amos and Janes Addiction, we would never have considered it goth music just because it found its way into our regular rotation. Sadly, we were never familiar with Nick Cave at that point in time, which is really a shame. Since then, I’ve become and remain a huge fan of his.
not a goth, but always thought Peter Murphy (Bauhaus) was the godfather of goth. Am I wrong?
The goth club I go to plays what I think of as Old Goth (Bauhaus, the Cure, Siouxsie, that silly Priests and cannibals song etc.), Industrial (NIN, Front Line Assembly, Skinny Puppy, things with lots of shouting and machinery noises), Ethereal (Dead Can Dance, Delirium, Switchblade Symphony), and EBM (Seabound, Wolfsheim, VNV Nation, This Morn 'Omina).
Also KMFDM, Marilyn Manson (highly debatable about gothness, I know), Assemblage 23, The Prodigy, Underworld, Cat Rapes Dog, Depeche Mode, And One, Strormkern, Nitzer Eb, Velvet Acid Christ, Revolver 1010, Feindflug, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Many bands cross boundaries. It’s all pretty fluid.
I was always under the impression that Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi is Dead” kicke doff the goth movement, or waht have you. That’s just what I have heard, I am no authority.
Goth is like pornography: you can’t really define it but you know it when you see it.
Also, no discussion of Goth can ever be complete without a moment of reverence for the goddess of–well, of many things, among which Goth.
Well, Mr Cash did wear a lot of black.