Lyric discussion by warmPhase 

Cover art for Darker with the Day lyrics by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

The interpretations are all interesting. Having heard interviews with Cave makes me think his own inspirations are usually something simple and not too heavy with direct symbolic meaning. He seems to prefer to evoke a mood through otherwise ordinary narratives.

The father slumped in the snow really really hearkens to his own father being below ground in the grave. He has talked very specifically about the tremendous impact that the early and sudden loss of his father caused. He was 17 when his father passed. Listen to his lecture "the Secret Life of the Love Song".
currently, it still lives, in the wild, here: https://soundcloud.com/chooboorah/01-nick-cave-the-secret-life-of-the-love-song

One more try... I think the site may be stripping out the colon from the URL If this doesn't work, add a colon ( : ) after "http": http://soundcloud.com/chooboorah/01-nick-cave-the-secret-life-of-the-love-song