Thinking about music
I’ve been listening to a lot of Nick Cave lately. Mr. Cave is an Australian musician often compared to Tom Waits for the sake of an American baseline and credited by at least one person I can remember (an Australian) with playing a pivotal role in kicking off the goth rock movement through his earlier band, The Birthday Party. His style, though often dark, is certainly not goth, and the emotional qualities of his songs seem to give them an eloquence that complements the harshest depths of human emotion. I wouldn’t call his music polarizing, since such a generalization seems to cheapen the range of possible tastes, but, of those who are familiar with his works, I only recall one person saying that he hated it, a statement which was based mostly upon a quote from a 1994 Rolling Stone interview [1], “[high school kids] should stop reading Bukowski, and they should stop listening to people who tell them to read Bukowski.”
One peculiarity I’ve noticed about the music of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is the occasional song that seems to repeat forever. The earliest of these I can recall is Tender Prey’s “Mercy Seat,” a more gothic song reminiscent of bands like Christian Death, and a song which ends with about five minutes of variations on the chorus. It works for a while, building a sense of the relentless conflict of the protagonist, but it gets old after a while. The lyrics, written out in full, occupy a full page of the ten-page booklet for this ten-track album, and four and a half of those pages are taken by photographs. Another song which seems to go on for a while is “Hiding All Away,” from Abattoir Blues, half of the most recent double album release, but it seems to work well. It’s a six and a half minute repetition of the same theme, but it builds well. It never becomes tiresome, and it has a great finale. Overall, Abattoir Blues is becoming my favorite Nick Cave album, taking the spot formerly held by the angry, cynical Let Love In. “Hiding All Away” works kind of the same way as 12-bar blues in that, though it’s the same thing over and over again, there are things happening on top of it that keep the music interesting.
I tend to split the discography of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds into three segments: the Birthday Party leftovers (From Her to Eternity through Tender Prey), the post-heroin days (The Good Son through Murder Ballads), and the new stuff (The Boatman’s Call onwards). I’ll admit that, though I find the new stuff strangely intriguing, I’ve had a hard time wrapping my head around it. The Boatman’s Call, a very subdued, stripped-down album, eluded me for the longest time, though I think I’ve recently started to really understand it. I had the opportunity to listen to it while really sad (as opposed to the goth kind of sad), and it all kind of came together. The song “People Ain’t No Good” was featured in the soundtrack of Shrek 2, so it’s possible that I’m the last person who made this breakthrough. I’ve come to really appreciate the quiet pondering of The Boatman’s Call, and the fragility and hidden violence of No More Shall We Part, but my confusion at Nocturama has instead given way to just plain not liking it. An especially annoying song on this album is the last one, “Babe, I’m On Fire.” Like the later “Hiding All Away” it’s a repetition on a theme, but the tone and structure never changes, and it lasts nearly fifteen minutes. I mean, shit damn. It’s good for about three of those minutes. And this is after he quit heroin! I just don’t get it.
Links:
[1] Interview from Rolling Stone