Nick Cave : Classic or Dud ?

Classic? Beyond classic, fucking godlike more like. Try the _Live Seeds_ album, _Kicking Against the Pricks_ or _Let Love In_.

There's been a real shift in how Cave is perceived. When I first started reading the press he was always treated as this borderline nutter goth smack freak, now he's an Important Figure, and in between there was this oh-it's-another-Nick-Cave-album period, which would always qualify the "He's good" with a big "But". I think that got it right, pretty much.

A handful of stunning tracks though - "Mutiny In Heaven", "Tupelo", "The Mercy Seat", "The Ship Song", "Do You Love Me?", "Stagger Lee". So surely not a dud.

The Good Son proved the leonard cohen territory was his ie a very well structured running sequence, and ambience that almost saves also-rans like "weeping song",
but he dropped the ball on Henry's Deam so badly that i really haven't been able to bother much since

I mean there are a few songs on Let Love In, but for me that's as patchy as the album that preceeded it (Henry)

i believe he can only do so many really good ballads though, and that he's revisited those same ballads so often with the recent albums

i say there're have been so few rock songs that i can count them -- "The good son" & "the hammer came down", "Long time man", "Jangling Jack", "John Finn's wife" -- that's one or at most two good rock songs for each of those albums ! (oh "papa won't save you Henry", "who will be the witness", "jack the ripper", "weeping song" all lousy songs, such rock-by-numbers stuff, will not save him)

go back to your funeral my trial for the whole range, great title track ballad through the true freak-show feel of "The Carny", (better than anything the residents had produced for oh, so-long), and then the great whine-o-drone of "long time man" and the succinct birthday party punch of "scum" -- a classic album, from when Cave had to produce decent stuff to keep his job and maintain and propogate his reputation

"Murder Ballads" a great Aussie cash-in for then career dwindlings of Kylie and Nick (and what an unexpected couple !! proving they're both really show-biz and contenders for legit. rock star -- i thought Cave had some outsider cred -- maybe this was needed to break the concept to new audiences ?? it worked i suppose, but just a big-budget re-rendering of "long time man" idea to me)

ok the birthday party and early bad seed stuff didn't get the easy pay-checks the concept and oomph of their mere presence deserved as real-life art in the public eye, so
good luck to him for those initial flashes of real brilliance

maybe he'd be best served by a "greatest rock songs" and "greatest 'love' songs" double greatest hits, and then save those good songs for singles and forget the nine-yards albums

(ie you should not produce a whole filled out album if you don't have enough good songs)

I've only heard three Cave solo tracks: his cover of Neil Young's "Helpless," which I love, his cover of the Beatles, "Let It Be," which I despise, and that song "I'll Love You Till The End Of The World," which is pretty nice. I'm guessing people would recommend The Good Son as the place to start checking out his solo work? From Her To Eternity?

I trust many of you already know what my full first name is.

Mmm hmm.

So, um, what about my opinion regarding Nick Cave? Well, when you're able to selfishly claim that song for yourself, what other answer can you have but CLASSIC? All those naysayers can just kiss me. And Momus? I happen to like Kylie Minogue, too. She comes from a magical little place with little elfin fairies who spread their pixie dust all across this land. What do you say about Kylie's collaborations with the Manic Street Preachers? MSP also like Kylie.

But back to Nick Cave. Classic. A surprising one, too, considering how little I actually care for country. But I like this brand of graveyard country rock. And damn, I need to play "City of Refuge" now.

What do you think of The Bad Seeds? Surely you must like them... ?

I'm going to listen to my namesake song again.

I may be new and not know shit but I do know I don't like this kid at all.

No, I really like it as well.

whatever

What do you think of The Bad Seeds? Surely you must like them... ?

no

The last record of his I bought was "Murder Ballads" and I didn't really like it much and at the time was getting into some different music. I've been curious about the last three, but not enough to search them out.

Did you check out Aereogramme by the way?

Not sure if anyone else watched Idiot Prayer last night, I was lukewarm on the idea going into it, the whole forced "live event" feel, clunky ticketing processes, solo piano, etc, but man it was really awesome, he did a great/wide selection of Bad Seeds stuff, a couple of Grinderman songs, a new song, all of it was great. The two Ghosteen songs (a record I have really come around on), esp "Galleon Ship", sounded perfect as solo piano jams.

I was hoping for "Wild World" but I'll take "Papa Won't Leave You Henry" any day of the week.

The execution (at least in North America, I know UK & Australia had issues with the stream) was excellent and expensive, I am sure this will get released in wider form at some point

yeah it was really nice; it was essentially a PPV film since it was made last month, but this made up for the cancelled tour this year. Performances were top notch. Yeah I'm sure this will be available later and likely is already on torrents somewhere; if you streamed this to your computer (which was kind of a pain in the ass) they just hosted it on vimeo and despite the "you can't log in later than start time" you absolutely could, and you could pause and rewind and even start over if you wanted to.

Bjork is doing 4 livestream concerts in August, via dice as well; but these appear to be actual live events. Looking forward to them.

Wasn't part of the point (and price) that it was a one-off, not to be released at a later date?

(Difficult to imagine that it won't be obviously).

It was, but the way the thing was shot & recorded it would be insane to think they are just going to sit on it forever.

And yeah despite all the "one time only! basically live event! not really!" hype it was stream-able right away, though I wonder if that had to do with the technical problems that it had in Australia and the UK? Like maybe they decided to be on the safe side and just have be like a normal streaming video.

And would I be cheesed if it were available later to people who didn't shell out 20 bucks? Not really

yeah I downloaded this from a torrent site already

I would've paid for this if it was actually live and I thought about paying anyway. A couple of his films (the concert one and the one about the previous album) were supposedly one-night only as well, weren't they? I don't really mind all this stuff. As someone who's followed him for a long long time, I have a kind of respect for how fucking skilful he is at making shitloads of money nowadays. Every time he does something like this, I think of his song "Easy Money" - that really nailed it. And I get it - providing for his family and then some is his priority above everything else, fair enough.

This is funny: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/piano-you-played-for-idiot-prayer/

https://www.theredhandfiles.com/1164-2/

stan culture strikes again

Vol. 1 of a major biography in the works:

https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460713211/boy-on-fire/

Nick Cave seems like someone that would write an exemplary and honest memoir that still manages to elide major events and subjects, like Springsteen did, imo.

Did anyone see last week’s solo concert?

Oh nevermind, missed the earlier posts.

crowdfunder for nick: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/1172-2/

that follows on an earlier report where apparently people have been calling that piano company telling them to give him a piano; he asked them to stop

these toxic nick cave stans (cave trolls??) are out of control

Looking back at his facetious post:

Now, one of the things you may or may not know about being a famous musician is that companies give you shit for free. The more famous you are, the more shit you get — you just have to wear one of their t-shirts or a branded cap or something.

I'm struck by the thought that if you have to explain a joke to the room, you're in the wrong room. The wit of cult-artist years of songwriting were built around the fact that he never winked. That post needed a winky emoticon, which would further kill the joke, so he shoulda caught himself.

tbf the internet is mostly one very large wrong room

yeah!

crowdfunder for nick: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/1172-2/

Nick's response is quite funny, good to see he isn't taking himself too seriously.

And would I be cheesed if it were available later to people who didn't shell out 20 bucks? Not really

― chr1sb3singer, Friday, July 24, 2020 11:43 AM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

And there it is

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/nick-cave-idiot-prayer-concert-live-album-1054536/

The film is going to be in released in cinemas with extra songs as well.

I'm not one to watch a concert movie, but I just listened to the audio version of Idiot Prayer that was just released as an album and it's kind of the perfect thing to close this really terrible year with.

My only regret is that I cannot listen to it with the biggest Nick Cave fan I knew and one of y best friends, who passed away from cancer almost exactly two years ago.

Incidentally, charlie rex has proposed a Cave et al ballot-based poll in coming days. Expect an actual dedicated thread very soon...

omg definitely will participate in that :D

https://www.theredhandfiles.com/how-is-your-lockdown/

the upcoming quarantine album is titled Carnage

Carnage is out now! Cave/Ellis only. sounds great so far.

Seeing there's a new book out on the young NIck Cave
There was a competition on the ROiwland S Howard FB p[age for copies last week.

i'm kinda surprised this ended up being just a cave & ellis album, was expecting at least some remote contributions from the other bad seeds

those "hand of god" backing vocals make me think of pj harvey

so far it's pretty in line with push the sky away and skeleton tree in sound, except with electronic beats

like specifically this feels like the album "animal x" would have fitted on

the minor->major shift in "white elephant" is kinda deflating, it was great to hang around with Mean Nick for a few minutes again

yeah but it still rules, wish he snarled the mean part more though. absolutely the highlight so far

the first half is a peek into the alternate universe where instead of making the boatman's call he got really into electronic textures in the way so many bands did in the late 90s and tried to make something resembling trip-hop

bodes well for the long teased grinderman 3

"what doesn't kill you makes you........crazier" is a pretty classic nick cave capper

cool little album, kinda merges the arc of the last three albums into one

i prefer the moodier first half of the album though, it's more interesting than the second half which sounds beautiful but they did that territory better on ghosteen not too long ago. the first half at least goes to some interesting new places and doesn't mirror skeleton tree & push the sky away as directly

"white elephant" definitely my favourite

thanks for the heads up! also liked the first half better, and thought White Elephant sounded like self-parody :)

(obv Cave has always believed that self-parody is nothing to be frightened of)

Hmm, I wonder if "Weird" Al is even capable of self-parody, and how he would go about doing it? I guess like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4wFviI79VA

lmao you and your thought exercises <3

For years Anita Lane was overshadowed by her collaborator and ex-boyfriend Nick Cave. Eleanor Philpot argues that we instead need to see the singer as an artist whose exploration of female sexuality was way ahead of its time.

I'm delighted she is getting a long, long overdue reappraisal.

I'm also delighted that Mute will be reissuing Sex O’Clock later in 2021, the album's first vinyl release

Sad update:

Goodbye lovely Anita, my most magical friend. Will be so missed. Love to all who loved her . 💔✨#anitalane pic.twitter.com/VL4smrGM9P

— Kid Congo Powers (@kidcongopowers) April 28, 2021

Oh no! So sad. Such a talent.

noooo ;_;

RIP

went out, found Boy On Fire on the shelf in the local chain newsagent. So bought it despite being broke, cos t was cheaper than I think I'd heard it was elsewhere. (Oh yeah had access beyond the front of the shop to the shelfs that people haven't been near since the start of the year.)
Then got home and heard that Anita who must feature heavily was dead. Sorry to hear that.

RIP. Had never heard her version of Sexual Healing before ( w / Nick Cave on backup vocals).

(Johannes Beck & Moritz Wolpert are credited as the "choir" on that. Barry Adamson plays vibes, though.)

Rob Sheffield obit for Rolling Stone.

Memories by Nick: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/tell-us-about-anita/

Standing on the street in a baby-doll dress, surrounded by sunshine, laughing and radiating a piercing beauty of such force you stop breathing.

I could not believe my eyes.

Later, at my kitchen table drawing things, she had a quickness of touch and a clear, light line full of humour, throwing each drawing away and starting another, charged with a rampant, unstable, fatal energy that would follow her all her life. My line, amateur and ponderous.

Everyone wanted to work with her but it was like trying to trap lightning in a bottle. Mick Harvey managed to coral her into the recording studio, but these precious offerings are a fraction of what she was.

She was the smartest and most talented of all of us, by far.

Walked into the most prestigious art college in Australia — on a whim — and talked her way into being given a place there. Bought an easel, some butcher’s paper, some crayons, put on a dress, did her hair and never went back in.

She thought the best ideas were the ones that never saw the light of day.

She was the brains behind The Birthday Party, wrote a bunch of their songs, wrote ‘From Her to Eternity’, ‘The World’s a Girl’, ’Sugar in a Hurricane’ and my favourite Bad Seeds song, ‘Stranger Than Kindness’, but was much more than that.

(more in the link)