Name: In the Pines
ISBN: 9781786892157

Erik Kriek

Drawing on classic murder ballads - songs, some of them centuries old, which narrate the tales of violence and skulduggery, and have been covered by artists including Jonny Cash, Nick Cave, Steve Earle and Gillian Welch - In the Pines delves deeps into the dark backwoods of Americana to unearth five classic tales of love, crime, betrayal and death. Eerie, bloody, wistful and strange, In the Pines will lead you down where the wild roses grow - to the very heart of the forest, where the ghosts wander, their long-buried secrets unfurling in song.

5 Murder Ballads

In the Pines

The murder ballad holds a rock-solid position in US roots music and the Great American Songbook for decades. Telling the stories of sometimes true and often not-so-true-crimes and other horrific events, they are raw stories full of unrequited love, betrayal, life, and death. The song form stems from the Anglo-Saxon ballad tradition, where stories were orally passed on to a mostly illiterate population. Dutch cartoonist Erik Kriek was inspired by five old and new murder ballads — including songs by modern masters such as Nick Cave, Steve Earle, and Gillian Welch — and used them as a launching point for five special and ruthless graphic narratives that dig deep into the darkness of Americana, in which guns and religion maintain an uneasy balance.

Andrew Sztehlo

An excellent series of graphic adaptations of American murder ballads, both new and old. The real star here is Kriek’s stellar visual storytelling. All of these stories, you can feel the encroaching doom on his characters.

In the Pines 5 Murder Ballads

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