Best Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Album

Incidentally, the ones I own are:

The Firstborn Is Dead (1985)
Your Funeral... My Trial (1986)
Henry's Dream (1992)
Murder Ballads (1996)
No More Shall We Part (2001)

and no more shall we vote
it will no longer be necessary

It's a tough choice between The Firstborn Is Dead and Your Funeral... My Trial, but I have to go with the latter. It hits the perfect medium between aggressive blues rock and come down melancholy. HMs to From Her to Eternity and No More Shall We Part.

Best Nick Cave Album...Poll Ends May 14

Your funeral my trial is the ilx answer

and "Your Funeral...My Trial" is the correct answer.

There are several different phases in the career.
There's an early noisy period which I think goes up to Your Funeral My Trial where the texture of Blixa's weirdly detuned guitar is pretty significant. That's certainly true on the first lp, & I think is there for the next couple, not sure about Kicking Against the Pricks the cover lp.
It also features Mick Harvey on drums so retains some of his stiff-wristed feel in that aspect, wonder if the introduction of Thomas Wydler on drums in '86 is more significant. Would mean the rhythms were more supple for one thing I think. Possibly need to relisten through the catalogue to see

Tender Prey gets more garage rocking or something, I think it sees the introduction of Kid Congo on guitar. So could just be reflecting a change of line-up to that of a more conventional rock band. Kid is a self taught guitarist as Blixa was but his background is more in bands that reshaped roots and rockabilly music than Blixa's which was about textured noise being applied to influences from folk/blues/whatever.

I'm trying to think how many different phases there are, I could see a phase going from From Her To eternity to Your Funeral My trial. One from Tender Prey to Let Love In bookended by Murder Ballads which is a bit of a concept album as Kicking Against The Pricks was. Then a group that includes The Boatman's Call, No MOre Shall We Part and Abbatoir blues which would therefore include Nocturama. But I don't know if that would include Dig! Lazarus Dig! which was when Mick Harvey left and Push The sky Away would be on its own as the start of something new. & the 2 Grinderman lps are pretty decent too.

The ones I really like are
From Her To Eternity
Your Funeral My Trial
Tender Prey
Good Son
Let Love In
Dig Lazarus Dig
and Push the Sky Away

though there are great bits on the other lps too and I'm still not familiar with Abbatoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus, despite getting it when it was first released.
I think Push The Sky Away was a fantastic lp despite some odd lyric choices (bit about the Jewish hat thing especially)

& if you're not familiar with them the preceding band the Birthday Party are pretty awesome. One of my favourite bands ever.

Grinderman/Dig!/Grinderman is a phase imo, and the piano tedium phase is Boatman/No More/Nocturama - Blues/Orpheus is a different feel (obv the two good songs on Nocturama are as well).

Everything between 84 and 94 is pretty essential, IMO.

For studio, I'm going with Lazarus. It feels like he was trying to make a Stooges album with lyrics - it's just front-to-back fun, which holds up more to me now that I'm out of my "I start my day with death march anthems" phase. After that I'd go for a live recording. Abattoir Blues Tour is great.

But I have little tolerance for his studio work, generally. Always have. I guess because I can't tell how serious he's being with the persona, like he's doing a bit he's not letting people in on yet.

At one point it was "The Boatman's Call" but the weak songs started to reveal themselves over time. Now it's "Abattoir Blues" - I still can't believe he made a record that good so far into his career.

i'm still gradually getting into his catalog. i find tender prey to be much better than your funeral my trial, despite the brilliance of that latter's title track

still your funeral my trial.

in kind of related news, this is so great (i've watched it there times already) - http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s3346835.htm

3

Murder Ballads and Kicking Against The Pricks are the most fun for me - big, melodramatic, campy, funny, dark, verging on self-parody but sharp enough to pull it off - all of Cave's most endearing qualities are there in spades. "Tender Prey" has a lot of the same spirit. I also love Cave when he writes in his full-blown story-telling mode - like "Mercy Seat" or "Curse of Millhaven" and "Stagger Lee". I should go re-listen to "Your Funeral", it never clicked with me in the way the rest of those early-ish ones do.

all the late 80s early 90s stuff

maybe my problem is that I cannot listen to a piano/ballad-majority Bad Seeds album....at all

It is my problem though.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I'm with Stir on Yr Funeral and The Rowland film.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Nothing with zero votes! Firstborn underperforms! Shock!

Maybe there should be a "what's your second fav Nick album?"

Who really picked "Nocturama"?!

From my OP: "if you ask ten Nick Cave fans what his best album is, you will likely get ten different replies"

I underestimated by five.

Late 90s early 00s Nick is the worst

B-but "Babe, I'm On Fire"!

wow, votes for everything, the sign of a solid artist

somebody should do a poll of all the no-zeroes artist polls