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rmWell, I finally cracked open the new Nick Cave today, and Oh My Heavens....
I've been listening to Nick Cave for what is rapidly approaching two decades now. I've grown up listening to his music, my interest in it being a natural outgrowth I think of growing up with parents who were really into country and bluegrass music. At any rate, I've seen Nick Cave in concert probably dozens of times and have a lot of really key moments in my life that connect back there in some way or other (and good friends and longtime readers know the concert in DC story).
There are a lot of reasons I appreciate Nick Cave -- the sound, and the incredibly detailed self-contained world that his albums seem to be set in. Some albums grab me more than others, but it would make more sense for me to list the ones I hardly ever listen to as opposed to the ones I adore.
At any rate, the new one, which is a double set, just blows anything he's done before out of the water. Sure, The Ship Song will always be my favourite love song ever, and his cover of In the Ghetto is legendary, and Murder Ballads was a hoot, and dude he had a guy in his band named Blixa (yay Blixa! He's from Einstruzende Neubauten for anyone who cares and likes noise), blah blah blah.
This new stuff has turned some sort of corner though. Some of it, as has been happening on the last couple of discs is very hopeful and sweet -- something he does remarkably well. But what's interesting about this album is how little rage it contains. Sure, there are still murders, hateful women, predatory homosexuals, and vengeful gods (Nick Cave is a weird guy, but much smarter about all these things than someone who hasn't listened to his stuff could really imagine, also it's all about his weird little alternate world), but it almost slips by you on this album, and then you listen to it a second time, and catch the narrative and it's just shocking.
Special points for his very disturbing retelling of that whole Orpheus business, an oddly subtle and mournful song about prostitution, and a fairytale about an ape that is so disturbing in its shaky sound and imagery I can't listen to it without getting chills. And all of this is interspersed with some really beautiful, hopeful, gospel-inspired stuff, and a lot of very sexy, very funky rhythms.
For all the weird, and the disturbing and the talking animals and drunken men and so forth and so forth, this record feels really whole and healing, in a way I haven't quite figured out yet. But if you're a fan, you've got to get this one, and if you're not, but you've always been curious, it's incredibly accessible and easily argued that it's his best. Certainly, there isn't a throwaway track on it.
But really, I am warning you about the song with the ape and the snake.
I've been listening to Nick Cave for what is rapidly approaching two decades now. I've grown up listening to his music, my interest in it being a natural outgrowth I think of growing up with parents who were really into country and bluegrass music. At any rate, I've seen Nick Cave in concert probably dozens of times and have a lot of really key moments in my life that connect back there in some way or other (and good friends and longtime readers know the concert in DC story).
There are a lot of reasons I appreciate Nick Cave -- the sound, and the incredibly detailed self-contained world that his albums seem to be set in. Some albums grab me more than others, but it would make more sense for me to list the ones I hardly ever listen to as opposed to the ones I adore.
At any rate, the new one, which is a double set, just blows anything he's done before out of the water. Sure, The Ship Song will always be my favourite love song ever, and his cover of In the Ghetto is legendary, and Murder Ballads was a hoot, and dude he had a guy in his band named Blixa (yay Blixa! He's from Einstruzende Neubauten for anyone who cares and likes noise), blah blah blah.
This new stuff has turned some sort of corner though. Some of it, as has been happening on the last couple of discs is very hopeful and sweet -- something he does remarkably well. But what's interesting about this album is how little rage it contains. Sure, there are still murders, hateful women, predatory homosexuals, and vengeful gods (Nick Cave is a weird guy, but much smarter about all these things than someone who hasn't listened to his stuff could really imagine, also it's all about his weird little alternate world), but it almost slips by you on this album, and then you listen to it a second time, and catch the narrative and it's just shocking.
Special points for his very disturbing retelling of that whole Orpheus business, an oddly subtle and mournful song about prostitution, and a fairytale about an ape that is so disturbing in its shaky sound and imagery I can't listen to it without getting chills. And all of this is interspersed with some really beautiful, hopeful, gospel-inspired stuff, and a lot of very sexy, very funky rhythms.
For all the weird, and the disturbing and the talking animals and drunken men and so forth and so forth, this record feels really whole and healing, in a way I haven't quite figured out yet. But if you're a fan, you've got to get this one, and if you're not, but you've always been curious, it's incredibly accessible and easily argued that it's his best. Certainly, there isn't a throwaway track on it.
But really, I am warning you about the song with the ape and the snake.
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Date: 2004-11-02 07:31 am (UTC)oh, and what is the concert in dc story? i must have missed that one.
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Date: 2004-11-02 01:16 pm (UTC)Short version: When I was 17 I got to a NC gig early, got to hang out with him and a couple of other people who got there early because of the lack of assigned seating at the location, saw the band rehearse, saw the show (which is an amazing story in and of itself), he sang all of Hey Joe leaning right down into my face, and afterwards, being a seventeen-year-old virgin who was either really stupid or really smart I bolted from this whole drinking beer and hanging out with the smarmy band scenario.
Yes, one of my claims to fame is I didn't sleep with Nick Cave.