Friday 4 May 2012

LaRM day 71 (Nick Cave)

1990's The Good Son is really the transitional album for Nick Cave I think. There's a solid mix of incredibly strong dunken balladry combined with the usual rollicking noise and it's got some fantastic songs in 'The Ship Song', 'The Weeping Song' and 'Lucy'. There's a sense of unease in the album though and I suspect it's a tension not between the band members but between the types of songwriting: the scrappy constructions that build to brutal crescendos and the much more considered structural songs. The latter was to win out triumphantly but there's a feeling of uncertainty about The Good Son, and although it's a superb album, you can sense in listening to it that there's a change due. That change is marked on Henry's Dream (1992), an album which tends to be seen as one of Cave's weakest. I find that completely inexplicable, it's the record on which his skill as a thoroughly unique but incredibly adept and skilled songwriter really starts to show itself in all its glory. The songs on Henry's Dream are fantastic and although there is perhaps a slight tendancy to overproduction (maybe that's why people don't like it so much, it sounds very clean) it's a fabulous record I think. The narrative storytelling focus of Cave's lyrics is stronger than every and despite a couple of rather trite murder ballad type of songs, the whole thing is gripping. Admittedly it doesn't sustain momentum throughout, but it sets its own bar too high with a superb opening treble of 'Papa Won't Leave You, Henry', 'I Had a Dream, Joe' and 'Straight To You'.

For many the real rewards for Cave's increasingly sophisticated and singular songwriting were first properly to be found on Let Love In (1994). It's certainly a brilliant album and the power of the Bad Seeds is felt much more strongly than on The Good Son or Henry's Dream ('Thirsty Dog', although far from the best song on the album is a great showcase for the band) and on the whole it's a big, broody and savage beast of an album which allows Cave to give vent to his most apocalyptic visions of love and its consequences. There are some big, big songs here, 'Do You Love Me?' and 'Red Right Hand' being probably two of his most famous tunes. The successes of Let Love In are tempered somewhat by the hit and miss Murder Ballads (1995). There are some truly spectacular songs here but the ever-present mordant humour of Cave's records tips over into near parody on occasion on Murder Ballads. For every 'Lovely Creature' there's a 'Where the Wild Roses Grow', just as, like those two songs, for every PJ Harvey guest appearance there's a Kylie Minogue. When the album works it's quite brilliant (the two traditional song interpretations, 'Henry Lee' and 'Stagger Lee', and the mammoth 15-minute trip through hell 'O'Malley's Bar') but there are a couple of duds and pointless songs ('The Curse of Milhaven' is a little like a bad joke, and the aforementioned 'Where the Wild Roses Grow' which to my mind is an abject disaster, both lyrically and structurally and it's ruinous status is confirmed by having Kylie sing on it). It is in truth a wonderful album on the whole, but the sense of the joke being a bit on the listener and the two or three redundant tunes knocks it a bit in my view. (PS I think the album was sort of intended to be a side project in a way anyway, because it's the only studio album until 2001 on which Cave himself was not depicted on the cover.)

Getting dumped by PJ Harvey did wonders for Cave's songwriting but it didn't appear to do much for his psyche and pretty much destroyed his lyric-writing skills. The Boatman's Call (1997) is a beautiful album, composed almost exclusively of lovelorn ballads, every one of which is truly lovely. All of the mad bluster and the gallows humour seems to have pretty much vanished and instead we have a succession of alternately bruised and brooding songs. Heavens though the lyrics are terrible. People have really tried to suggest that to open an album with the line "I don't believe in an interventionist God" is genius. It isn't, it's terrible. It doesn't scan with what follows for a start and it's downhill all the way from there lyrically. 'Black Hair' I suppose is an obsessive's report back about his fixation but instead of sounding like a howl of despair it sounds, well, silly. It's a real shame mainly because these shockers grace such wonderful tunes. An album of ballads should become boring somewhere along the way, but The Boatman's Call is thematically chilling and atmospherically enveloping throughout. You can ignore the specifics of the words and enjoy the feel of the album undiminished I think.

I miss a couple of albums at this point so we go straight on to Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (2004). I don't know what went on in the intervening period, but Abattoir Blues sounds as Cave has been completely reinvigorated. Opener 'Get Ready for Love' is a coruscating blast of Bad Seeds noise and it's a barnstormer of an introduction, suggesting a whole new phase of creativity. There are loads and loads of things going on in both Abattoir Blues and The Lyre of Orpheus (it was released as a kind of double album composed of two single albums, if you see what I mean). One great idea is to up the swamp blues foundation that has always sat deep at the bottom of Cave's work and one way of doing that is with a chorus of female backing vocalists who give a real sense of urgency to these razorwire songs. The tension in them is incredible, the Bad Seeds haven't sounded this on top of their rock game since Tender Prey and both albums are quite remarkable. On balance Abattoir Blues is the rougher, livelier, more confrontational of the two records and The Lyre of Orpheus the more relaxed, contemplative, inviting (indeed, 'Breathless' on The Lyre of Orpheus is a jaunty little acoustic guitar job with fluttering pipes and flutes). Either way, they're two sides of the same coin, each highlighting the best of each aspect of Cave's songwriting. Taken together the two albums are the most varied and the most exciting of his records for years.

And so to the final dose of Cave, it's his paint strippingly abrasive 2008 album Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!. It's not as brutal as the work that Cave had been concentrating on with Grinderman but it's still pretty aggressive. It's an easy album to love but it's a difficult one to like if you see what I mean. You can hear and feel that it's great, but you know it isn't doing you any good. I think it's just the pure energy that exudes from it that makes it so thrilling. It's unrestrained and unconcerned and it's all about getting the job done. It's great that some of Cave's best work has come so late on, and that he shows absolutely no signs of making concessions to either good taste, age or the comforts of wealth.

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