The World of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

If the darker side of rock and roll, the underbelly of life, soft, white, stench-ridden, writhing in guilt, pain, ecstatic bliss and obsessive desire turns you on … then these guys have got something for you …. Yes, you! … Roll up, roll up!

Don’t be fearful! What may appear, at first, to be a maelstrom of noise is a cunning collision of ancient Southern country blues, decadent mittel-Europe pre-war cabaret tunes, fairground waltzing organs, glorious blazing anthemic garage rock muzik and Vegas-period Elvis shot through with a wry sense of dark dark irony and poetic acrobatics.

This magical concoction is performed by a tight-knit cadre of soulful musical explorers ready for action, swaggering in black boots and long coats, staggering under the influence of a crazy cocktail of mind-bending stories and substances, who know how to treat a lady and hold their own in a brawl. Forget the Magnificent Seven, pshaw the A-Team, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds are still the last gang in town. … Roll up, roll up!

Cave and his squad’s 14 dramatic elpees over this lengthy period of around 25 years can easily be split into two distinct periods. The Eighties: slashing crashing squawking blues wailing debauchery, The Rest: slashing crashing squawking blues-wailing debauched guilt-ridden remorseful torch-singing garage rock murder anthems, or something. You picks yer period, you makes yer choice.

The Eighties:

Keywords: Berlin, Birthday Party, bats, shouting.

Releases: From Her To Eternity (1984), The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), Kicking Against the Pricks (1986), Your Funeral ... My Trial (1986), Tender Prey (1988).

As some readers may know, Australian-born Cave moved over to Blighty in the early ‘80s with his band The Birthday Party and rapidly rose to fame on the crest of a wave of goth-mania. Their astonishingly noise-some klang of barely-able-to-walk primitivism and ultra-violence blew audiences away, although they intelligently distanced themselves from the sillier elements of goth by snatching them, magnifying them and throwing them back in the faces of the media. Their Junkyard (1982) album is highly recommended. Somewhat inevitably, the group disbanded in 1984. Prime movers Cave and Mick Harvey along with ex-Magazine Barry Adamson, Hugo Race and spidery Einsturzende Neubauten front-man Blixa Bargeld got together for ‘From Her To Eternity’, the first missive from the land of the Bad Seeds. This wild collision of intensely thrashed electric guitar, guttural flailing vocalisms, crashing percussion and throbbing aggressive bass acts as a rotting tightrope between the nether regions of post-punk nihilism and primal swamp blues, setting the agenda for the rest of the decade. Dark sea shanties, gothic avant blues, gospel desperation, ‘From Her To Eternity’ collapses and crawls thru atonal misery to a bleak end.

Seeking solace from their demons the group mistakenly moved to decadent and crumbling pre-unification Berlin, where they lived by night and recorded four further albums: the slightly more accessible but no less dramatic Delta-blues/Elvis obsessed ‘The Firstborn Is Dead’, inspired and inspirational almost sing-along covers album, ‘Kicking Against the Pricks’ and the bleak wasteland nightmare of ‘Your Funeral .. My Trial’.

The Eighties come to a close with perhaps the group’s breakthrough album, ‘Tender Prey’. Bassist Barry Adamson having moved on, his duties were filled by guitarist Harvey, who shifted over to make room for ex-Gun Club Kid Congo Powers. This newly shaken cocktail of Bad Seeds seems to have gelled quite magnificently. Opener and rightly hailed electric chair classic ‘The Mercy Seat’ is a (not unusual) epic seven minute infectious remorseless ritualistic invocation (‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’) blasting off the album. Applause please for the use of piano throughout. This 88 key percussion instrument permeates the album, grounding it in its past and creating skeletal atmospheres in a way rarely matched in the world of rock’n’roll. Combining this most classical of instruments with unmatched craziness of Blixa, Powers and Harvey’s axe mangling creates a dystopia with one foot in history and another in a nightmare. Just where they want the listener to be. Crowd-pleasing rocker ‘Deanna’ takes boy-girl revolution to the American mid-West only to be almost eclipsed by intimate ‘Watching Alice’, begging ‘Mercy’, and uptown (Clash City) rocker ‘City Of Refuge’. ‘Tender Prey’’s further balladeering (‘Slowly Goes The Night’, ‘New Morning’) hint at futures yet to come, while ‘Sundays’ Slave’ and ‘Sugar, Sugar, Sugar’ reassure listeners of the continuing validity of noise, pain and a large dollop of desperation. In other words, ‘Tender Prey’, closing The Eighties, is the ultimate Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album.

The Rest:

Keywords: Ballads, maturity, magic and romance.

Releases: The Good Son (1990), Henry’s Dream (1992), Let Love In (1994), Murder Ballads (1996), The Boatman’s Call (1997), No More Shall We Part (2001)

After the cataclysmic swirl of the eighties and the acceptance of the pivotal ‘Tender Prey’ by a more mainstream audience, Cave and his Seeds decided to show their reflective, romantic side in ‘The Good Son’, (inspired by the story of the prodigal son’s brother). There are beautiful, fragile, magical moments on this album (‘Foi Na Cruz’, ‘The Weeping Son’, ‘The Ship Song’, ‘Lament’), outweighing the rockier cuts (preaching gospel mania ‘The Witness Song’ and the terrifying ‘The Hammer Song’). Although Cave’s reflective balladeering had been in plentiful supply on previous offerings, ‘The Good Son’ featured this approach in spades, perhaps due to his cleaned-up lifestyle. A perfect Sunday morning album.

Follow-up ‘Henry’s Dream’ opened with a slap in the face, a wakeup call to anyone thinking the band was now a crooner-fest and races through more tales of love, lust and violence. The maturity of the band shines through this (newly remastered and much improved) recording. Rather than lurching, they leap. They swagger rather than stagger. This tight and professional unit, fronted by Cave in one of his best performances are served up with dusty tales of the olde West, American gothic at its best. Like audio Cormac McCarthy (go read Blood Meridian). A manageable collection of songs which don’t run to the traditional epic length, ‘Henry’s Dream’ was one of a roll of albums cut by the band in this period. ‘Let Love In’, ‘Murder Ballads’, ‘The Boatman’s Call’ and ‘No More Shall We Part’ catapulted the group into superband territory. Indeed, the only superband to remain cool and credible over such a lengthy period. Each album has its own story – inspired by ancient folk songs, biblical nightmares, or collaborations with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Shane McGowan and PJ Harvey, and finely balances a razor blade of heart-rending balladeering and gut wrenching garage rock.

More recently, ‘Nocturama’ (2003), ‘Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus’ (2004) and ‘Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!’ (2008) as well as the side project ‘Grinderman’ (2007) indicate there is no stopping Cave and the Seeds. This quite extraordinary catalogue of sonic grinding, permeated throughout with more minor thirds than any other artist in recording history and woven through with lyrics which are simultaneously profound and hilarious, bears repeated and thorough listening.

New users should start with recently remastered ‘Tender Prey’. If you like the slashing crashing squawking blues wailing debauchery then work backwards. If you prefer the guilt-ridden remorseful torch-singing garage rock murder anthems then work forwards. The Rest’s roll of honour are the inverse of their predecessors – while the Eighties were scuzzed-up garage nightmares, the Rest are intense polished driving anthems and magical ballads. Both periods are equally valid and share their place and time. The spectres of Charley Patton, Howling Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Scott Walker, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jim Morrison, Captain Beefheart, Iggy Pop and Bob Dylan haunt every breath of these recordings, while only Iggy’s Stooges, Beefheart’s Magic Band and Dylan’s The Band can compare with the essential dynamic that exists between the Bad Seeds and their singer.

This piece could not have been written without the music of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds:

Anita Lane — lyrics (1984)
Barry Adamson — bass, electric guitar, drums, organ, piano, percussion, vocals (1983—1986)
Blixa Bargeld — electric guitar, slide guitar, pedal steel guitar, keyboards, vocals (1983—2003)
Conway Savage — piano, organ, vocals (1990—present)
Ed Kuepper — electric guitar, vocals (2009—present)
Hugo Race — electric guitar, vocals (1983—1984)
James Johnston — organ, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals (2003—2008; as guest, 1994)
Jim Sclavunos — percussion, drums, organ, melodica, vocals (1994—present)
Kid Congo Powers — electric guitar, slide guitar (1986—1990)
Martyn P. Casey — bass, vocals (1990—present)
Mick Harvey — electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass, drums, organ, percussion, piano, loops, string arrangements, vocals (1983—2009)
Nick Cave — vocals, piano, organ, harmonica, percussion, electric guitar, string arrangements (1983—present)
Roland Wolf (deceased) — piano, organ, electric guitar, vocals (1986—1989)
Thomas Wydler — drums, percussion, vocals (1985—present)
Warren Ellis — violin, fender mandocaster, loops, mandolin, tenor guitar, viola, bouzouki, accordion, flute, lute, piano, programming, percussion, string arrangements, vocals (1997—present; as guest, 1994—1997)