HAVING saluted AC/DC and Paul Kelly in recent years, Triple J turned its attention earlier this month to another iconic Australian musician - Nick Cave.
Few Australian musicians demand as much respect as Cave. His back catalogue - a string of albums and EPs with seminal goth-punk outfit The Birthday Party (originally known as Boys Next Door), 14 records with The Bad Seeds, two with Grinderman, and three movie soundtracks - has covered plenty of terrain, swinging from dissonant dark tales of murder and death to sweetly beautiful ballads, often within the space of consecutive songs on an album.
Carving out an incredibly literate catalogue since the late ’70s, Cave’s best loved and most enduring work has been with the Bad Seeds - here are five of their best.
Tender Prey (1988)
NOT that the group’s first four albums (all released between '84-'86) aren’t good, but it’s their fifth that’s the real breakthrough. Ominous Death Row opener The Mercy Seat, famously covered by Johnny Cash, has become Cave's signature tune, a pure classic and a live favourite. It's Tender Prey's best known track - a harrowing tale of a man approaching the electric chair - and it sets the tone for much of the album that follows, which focuses on death and redemption. The narrator of Mercy is thrown in a dungeon and begs on his knees against a backdrop of funereal piano chords and foreboding drums, while the demented tango of Up Jumped The Devil features someone "hanging from the gallow tree" as Satan searches for corrupted souls to claim over Blixa Bargeld's dissonant guitars and Mick Harvey's writhing bassline. The morbid fog is enthralling, with the spell only broken by the likes of '60s rocker throwback Deanna, which sounds upbeat and rollicking until you realise it features chracters getting shot in the head while they sleep (and there's even a bit more soul-claiming). The only true redemption for the listener comes at the very end of the album with the celebratory hymn New Morning. But mostly it's about sin and punishment, such as in the rampaging City Of Refuge (inspired by a Blind Willie Johnson song), and the hypnotic faux-western Sugar Sugar Sugar. The themes are one's Cave had explored previously - and would revisit again and again - but they're ones he does so well, especially on this record, which was featured in the books 100 Best Australian Albums and 1001 Albums To Hear Before You Die. It also cracked the UK top 70.
Here's a live version of The Mercy Seat - powerful stuff:
Henry’s Dream (1992)
CAVE, feeling this album didn't capture the live power of The Bad Seeds, was unhappy with the results, but it remains a fan favourite. Bookended by the harrowing imagery of Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry and the disturbing domestic scene of Jack The Ripper, Henry’s Dream is mooted to be a loose concept album about life and death in a lawless frontier town. You can practically hear the tumbleweeds rolling through the songs as the characters fall in love, experience apocalyptic visions, and ultimately die (it is Nick Cave after all). But amid the death and decay, there is beauty. Lead single Straight To You is one of his greatest ballads, while in Loom Of The Land, two lovers walk through the wintry night hand in hand (although one of them has a knife). These two sides to Henry's Dream make it something of a cross between the vengeance-filled Tender Prey and the more polished and occasionally tender The Good Son (1990), the latter of which contains the stunningly gorgeous ballad The Ship Song. It took until Henry's Dream - his seventh Bad Seeds record - for Cave to gain proper attention in Australia. The album went to number 41 and was his first to break the ARIA top 50. His reverance in the UK was far greater, as this was his third top 50 record there. Perhaps that higher level of regard was behind Cave's move to England after Henry's Dream.
It's songs like this that make you think Nick's secretly a big softie:
Let Love In (1994)
THE Bad Seeds slightly unhinged sounds and musical tendencies had mostly disappeared from The Good Son onwards, moving towards an increasingly polished sound. But while Let Love In was his most musically accessible album to date, Cave and his Seeds didn't dispense with the morbidity (nor the occasional noisy burst), making for a madly passionate collection. Opening track Do You Love Me? is chilling, the raucous Loverman was suitably creepy and malevolent for Metallica to cover on their Garage Inc album, and the sweet-sounding I Let Love In features a paramore bound, gagged, terrorized, castrated and lobotomised. Even the prettier-sounding songs, such as Ain't Gonna Rain Anymore, hint at darkness. The occasional violence and heartbroken cynicism of the album makes you see the title in a new light - if the lyrics of this record are any indication of love, do you really want to let it in? The centrepiece is the brilliantly haunting Red Right Hand (surprisingly not the lead single), which became popular with a whole new audience through its inclusion on the soundtrack of all three Scream films. Even without the connection to the post-modern horror film series, it's an epic and cinematic song, blending tolling bells, theremin, unnerving organ and mood-setting percussion to backdrop the story of a dangerous stranger who comes to town. It's a stand-out in a strong album, which was his first to reach the ARIA top 10. In the UK it made it to number 12.
Unfortunately this is the edited-down version of Red Right Hand but, still, what a song:
Murder Ballads (1996)
DEATH and Nick Cave have always gone hand-in-hand, yet this is probably his deadliest album. Murder Ballads are 10 songs of pure fatality, with 64 people dying along the course of its narratives (that’s 6.4 people per song, folks). There is a sense of humour, albeit dark, to it all - the wickedly funny barroom massacre of O’Malley’s Bar is a highlight, as is the violently profane Stagger Lee, and both are among the best songs on the record. With all the blood and guts, it seems a strange place to find pop princess Kylie Minogue, but there she is, in need of a career revival in the mid-'90s and beautifully playing the role of Eliza Day in the album's big hit Where The Wild Roses Grow. The album's other key guest is British singer PJ Harvey, whose contribution to Henry Lee makes it another stand-out. It was the presence of Minogue though, that helped elevate Murder Ballads and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds to a well-deserved level of popularity in Australia. Where The Wild Roses Grow went to number two in Australia (his previous best was Red Right Hand at number 62), won three ARIA awards, and landed in the top 10 of Triple J's Hottest 100 that year. Nobody seemed to mind the massive body count or the graphic lyrical depictions of murder - it was Cave's most successful album to that point in his career, reaching the top 10 in Australia, Germany and the UK (it was number three here - his best ever showing except for 2008's Dig, Lazarus Dig!!!). And rightly so, as it's a brilliant collection, condensing Cave's predilection for the tales of mortality and morality into one gorgeously produced collection. Not one for the kiddies though.
This is spine-tingling and slightly sexy - PJ Harvey and Nick Cave were said to be a couple around the time they made Henry Lee together:
Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus (2004)
AFTER the so-so Nocturama and the departure of long-time guitarist Blixa Bargeld, few figured Cave and co. would be able to deliver something as remarkable as this astonishing double album. A biblically proportioned two-disc set, AB/TLOO features St Nick leading his Bad Seed apostles through everything from chaotic stomping hellfire to heavenly fields of sweetness. It's another Cave masterpiece, but even more than that it's possibly his finest work ever. Time will tell, but for now it can at least be viewed as an astonishing distillation of his career into two discs of dark humour and disarming honesty, unconditional love and fiery hate, simple sweetness and unsettling sourness. The opening barrage Get Ready For Love sounds like Cave riding in front of the Four Horseman Of The Apocalypse with a rose in his teeth and a wicked glint in his eye, yet on Breathless he's damned-near frolicking through meadows with Cupid and a daisy chain on his head. It's these highs and lows that make this such a dizzying and fulfilling ride - Cave swerves from atheistic preacher (Get Ready For Love) to saviour (Cannibal Hymn), from insidious devil (Hiding All Away) to sweet lover (Babe, You Turn Me On), from troubled writer (There She Goes, My Beautiful World) to starry-eyed dreamer (Nature Boy), from cheeky mythologist (The Lyre Of Orpheus) to poetic romantic (Spell). It's an intoxicating mix, with the full force of fury and suitably restrained beauty provided by his best line-up of Bad Seeds to date.
After years of appreciating and respecting Nick Cave's work, this was the song that turned me into a fully fledged devotee:
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