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NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS THE BOATMAN'S CALL (1994) Rating (Out of 10): 10 Tracklisting: Into My Arms/Limetree Arbour/People Ain't No Good/Brompton Oratory/There Is A Kingdom/(Are You)The One That I've Been Waiting For?/Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere/West Country Girl/Black Hair/Idiot Prayer/Far From Me/Green Eyes Prior to the release of 1994's 'The BoatMan's Call' Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds had been syonymous with punk, seething lyrics, snarled vocals and a penchant for the violent and obsessive, but then a love affair with a certain PJ Harvey occurred, and while it ended badly it managed to produce something in Cave that made him record the most beautiful album of his career. Cave began his career in the late 70's fronting the Australian punk outfit The Birthday Party. After releasing 3 studio albums the band split up and Cave went on the form The Bad Seeds along with 'The Birthday Party' guitarist Mick Harvey. Continuing in the same manner as the previous band The Bad Seeds continued to release albums with a punk feel centring around Cave's continuing fixation with murder and violence. 'The Boatman's Call is Cave's 9th studio album and departs from other Seed's album's in a number of ways. Firstly, despite it being billed as an album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, it is essentially a Nick Cave solo album with the majority of the songs being written and performed by Cave himself and the rest of seeds being rendered more or less redundant for the majority of the album. Secondly, the theme and sound of the album is very different that Cave had previously released. Centring around love and God and spirituality, 'The Boatman's Call' is a luscious, delicate affair full of love songs, complete with yearning, tender vocals and lyrics. It is a deeply moving and highly spiritaul album with displays a much softer side to cave. The chaos of Cave's first band 'The Birthday Party' is nowhere to be found. The first four songs provide a strong opening to the album. Four incredibly beautiful love songs with poetic lyrics, each one flowing into the next flawlessly. The opening track 'Into My Arms' has got to be possibly the most beautiful love song ever written. It's not a conventional love song as the opening line suggests 'I don't believe in a interventionist God, but I know darling that you do/But if I did I'll kneel down and ask him not to intervene when it came to you'. Rumour has it that this song was played at Michael's Hutchence's funeral, and you can see why. There is a certain melancholy about it, a certain painful yearning. I imagine that Michael Hutchence isn't the only person whose had it played at their funeral. The following track 'Limetree Arbour' is another piano-led track with beautiful lyrics and vocals. It is softer than the previous track and more upbeat, but just as evocative and emotional. The wonderfully titled 'People Ain't No Good' is actually a love song and one of the strongest tracks on the album. It's hard not to sing along to 'You can see it everywhere you look, people just aint no good'. But despite the lyrics, it is actually a very beautiful song. Brompton Oratory calls on Cave's growing spirituality and has a very luscious and delicate quality to it. Starting off with a drum beat and organ, this is the song that makes me cry every time I hear it. The second half of the album takes on a darker tone, whilst still managing to carry on the beauty of the first half. 'Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere' gives Warren Ellis the opportunity to show off his fantastic violin skills which fit in perfectly with the tone of the track. 'West Country Girl' is possibly the one track on the album that is instantly recognisable as being about PJ Harvey. There's something slightly uneasy about this song. A bit like the Tindersticks 'Jism', there is a certain taboo obsessional quality that leaves a slightly itchy scratchy feeling as you listen to it. 'Black Hair' is minimilst and haunting and atmostpheric. 'Far From Me' is yet another incredibly deep, beautiful track with a wonder string accompaniment and touching vocals. It's the sort of song that draws you in, making you listen intently to every single note. The closing track gets the prize for the best line of lyrics on the album - 'This useless old fucker with his twinkling cunt'. Not the most romantic lyrics in the world I'll admit, but that's the real beauty of this album and of Nick Cave as an artist. He never compromises his talent or his artistic vision. He can articulate even the most difficult of emotions without resortinmg to cliche. 'Green Eyes' is a powerful track where Nick speaks the lyrics over his own vocals to great effect is a Leonard Cohen-esque manner. The Boatmans call remains one of my favourite albums of all time. It shows an artist who is versatile - someone widely comnsidered to be dark and violent writing possiby the most beautiful album ever made. Send A Comment ABBATOIR BLUES/THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS (2003)  Rating (Out of 10): 10 Tracklisting: Abbatoir Blues: Get Ready For Love/Cannibal's Hymn/Hiding All Away/Messiah Ward/There She Goes My Beautiful World/Nature Boy/Abbatoir Blues/Let the Bells Ring/Fable Of The Brown Ape The Lyre Of Orpheus : The Lyre Of Orpheus/Breathless/Babe You turn Me On/Easy Money/Supranaturally/Spell/Carry Me/ O Children When Nocturama was released in 2003, press releases stated that it was the first of three albums to be released in quick succession. The following two, in the form of Abbatoir Blues and The Lyre of Orpheus have been released as a two cd set. Cave has been quick to point out that they are a two album set rather than a double album emphasising that the two albums are meant to be seen as separate entities rather than one album too long to fit onto one disc. So each album then is a separate entity, existing in its own right. They could have been released separely and seen as separate albums without comparrisons, But sold together they compliment each other and provide contrasts of Cave's multifarious talent. Releasing two albums at once is not a new idea. Tom Waits did something similar last year, releasing Blood Money and Alice at the same time, but with each album packaged and sold separately. Yet the distinctions between the two Waits albums were more obvious than the two Cave albums. Blood Money was Waits's loud experiemental album, with Alice providing more scope for more quieter love songs. It's more difficult to separate the two Cave albums in the same way. While Abbatoir blues definitely has a louder, harsher more traditional Cave sound, The Lyre Of Orpheus has a more luscious softer feel, but each album has in itself moments of quiet, loud, dark, soft, traditional and experimental, making it diffiuclt to create a binary opposite between the two. Whether you chose to judge each album separately on its own merits, or judge them together as a collection, it doesn't really matter, as Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus is a piece of work that is as beautiful and lusicous and sophisticated as the box it comes packaged in! The release of this album saw major changes take place in the Bad Seeds camp. Blixa Bargeld, guitarist and Cave's right hand man with his characteristic pedal steel sound which was a lynch pin in the Bad Seeds sound, left the band to be replaced by a keyboard player rather than a guitarist. This has resulted in creating a very different sound for the band. The pedal steel is definitely missing but the keyboard creates a whole new fresh sound for the Seeds. 'Abbatoir Blues', whilst being the rockier, more alterative of the two albums, is also full of variety and depth of sound. Tracks such as 'Get Ready For Love' and 'Cannibal's Hymn' are traditional Cave type tracks with loud screaming vocals and lyrics which yeild to his fascination for the bloody, the murderous and the obsessive. But other tracks such as 'Nature Boy' opens up a whole different side to Cave, showing his chameleon-like talent for constantly changing and pushing back boundaries; a talent that is always true to itself and never does the same thing twice. The Lyre of Orpheus takes a much softer approach, not least in the track 'Breathless' which sounds as far removed from a Nick Cave track as it's possible to be. Beginning, quite bizarrly with what sounds like the reharsal of a primary school recorder club, Cave gives the performance of his life. 'Breathless' is most definitely the best song Cave has ever written and is quite possibly one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. He takes a tender poetic, love song and gives it a twist, like only he can. It would be fair to say that The Lyre Of Orpheus is an album of love songs, but this is Nick Cave we're talking about, so forget cheesy sickly sweet ballads and think passion, obsession often veering towards the sexual and perverse. ("I put one hand on your round, ripe heart, and the other down your panties"!! )But it is none the less an extremely beautiful album. Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus is most definitely the best thing Nick Cave have released since 'The Boatman's Call". For a while it looked like he would never be able to achieve the sheer brillance of the 1997 album, but much of that beauty, elegance and passion appears in this latest release. That's not to say that the two albums are similar. Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus is much more ambitious project with a much harder edge and more of a raw feel to it. But the passion, desire and originality that had been lacking from recent Cave albums is now well and truly back in abundance. And lets hope its here to stay. Send A Comment BACK TO INDEX BACK TO MUSIC REVIEWS INDEX |
