Post a controversial music opinion

Mmmm yes

Also I don't think Nick Cave is so much about theatricality as he is about selling an id with music attached to it

there is something I find off-putting about the more fanatical ends of Tom Waits/Nick Cave fandom (this whole exchange puts me in mind of an argument I had years ago w some guy who claimed the three greatest songwriters in the world were Cave, Waits and Cohen) where there's this kind of romanticizing of drunken nihilism.

I realize this is strawmanning a bit, not saying anyone here is doing this.

Drunken nihilism is actually kinda fun tho

Cave Waits and Cohen are precisely the greatest songwriters in the world for "some guy". I don't think the three songwriters have much common ground aside from coming up from the same plot of land as Philip Roth and John Berryman. They write accounts of straight white (and/or Jewish) male ("some guy") aging and decay, and drunken nihilism is definitely a part of it, but their appeal has more to do with "some guy" finding a moment of recognition in these male songwriters over 40. Learning how to be an old white dude with grace and drama. (Nobody could ever say Cave, Waits or Cohen were ever young, even when they were young)

I don't think of Waits as nihilist, like at all...he's a romantic

I don't think of Cave and Cohen as drunken

I feel like a lot of people just stopped paying attention to Cave sometime in the early 90s

Nihilism (cf. 'Dirt in the Ground') can be darkly Romantic.

maybe not so much nihilism as an eagerness to wallow in the darker recesses of humanity - violence, depravity, depression, poverty, old-fashioned gender politics etc

also old time relijun obviously

Cave was definitely young when he was young btw.

I don't think of Waits as nihilist, like at all...he's a romantic

I don't think of Cave and Cohen as drunken

I feel like a lot of people just stopped paying attention to Cave sometime in the early 90s

Waits is absolutely a romantic. He writes like 90% love songs. And people stopped paying attention to Waits (as in, stopped seriously engaging with the work and trying to figure out what he's doing because they've "already got him figured out") in the 90s, too.

Cave's past couple decades of work has been a mostly astonishing creative run, super diverse and complex and interesting.

Cohen from I'm Your Man onward was the best version of Cohen.

Waits stopped being a this so-called beatnik cliche back when Reagan was in his first term.

(probably even earlier)

I was going to say I prefer the earlier funnier work of all three but I don't like any Tom Waits tbh.

There's no way a nihilist writes a song like "Cold Water" never mind "Chicago."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAtdaCki-zA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huwf-MwdmuQ

love a lot of Waits' recent work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5X4N2exOsU

Was gonna start going over my deep thoughts about Cave's artifice, then realized I'd captured them pretty well here

http://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/post/150358081791/nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds-skeleton-tree-bad

Thirty years ago, Cave was my fav songwriter. He lost me by Murder Ballads, precisely because it was all theatrics. He has clawed his way back close to the lead in recent years, mostly because he doesn't try to recreate "Mercy Seat" or "Tupelo" at all. Tracks like that are over-the-top, but still fueled by empathy and exploration. They risk devolving into shtick, and that's what's occasionally happens to him (and Waits, and Cohen...) Bush, while not aesthetically similar, presents the same challenges. She has been cautiously unprolific enough to avoid the same problems though. Waits won me back with Bad as Me, which I didn't even give a listen until a few years after it came out. But the Bush-like sabbatical served him (and Brennan) well, allowing them to refocus.

I'd place Gillian Welch in this group as well, though she's a generation later, so a different context for the same costumes and criticisms. (More parallels: Welch and Waits are songwriting duos that maintain singular personae.)

booming review

thanks

Was gonna start going over my deep thoughts about Cave's artifice, then realized I'd captured them pretty well here

http://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/post/150358081791/nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds-skeleton-tree-bad

Well-crafted treatise; as a long time fan i seem to always find something redeemable in everything he touches (soundtracks and screenplays included). Cave is still a live draw and must feel pressure to produce rave-ups alongside his more tender ballads in order to keep his audience engaged. The swingin' dick illustrated below is artifice, but oh, what fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLKgUu7QqpM

Great post bendy

Lyre of Orpheus/Abbatoir Blues is the best Cave record

Sometimes I think so! That's where he won be back from Murder Ballads, specifically, "frappucino in my hand..."

the part where he manages to crack up the backup singers in "Hiding All Away" always makes me smile

(Nobody could ever say Cave, Waits or Cohen were ever young, even when they were young)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5I2vEcVC_I

CO: The best thing about any Nick Cave project is Tracy Pew, The Birthday Party bassist who died in '86.

C'mon Bendy, "The Kindness of Strangers" makes me ball everytime i hear it,,,, every time.

ball don't lie

I'm assume you mean bawl?

😏

I'm trying to listen to Scott Walker. Even when he seems to be trying his hardest his voice has as much soul as Dean Martin's.

they should have a song called "I'm limp for you"

Surrender is the best Chemical Brothers LP

I don't care about voices having 'soul'.

what about feeling?

Same.

Scott Walker's voice is very mannered and takes some getting used to, not the same thing as being soulless.

What should vox have then?

If it has feeling and soul, that's great, if it doesn't, it doesn't bother me. Though, of course it would help if the terms feeling and soul could be defined first.

There are different kinds of voices which work in different ways, I wouldn't say there are a universal set of qualities

http://www.teeconnection.co.uk/communities/4/004/013/140/934/images/4622701475.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsAeAMNz7Bs
I mean I can listen to someone like Jose Mauro with a very similar orchestral/confident baritone style to Scott Walker... and it just excels in every way because this music has soul. I was playing it and Scott Walker 4 side by side (both 1970 albums). I pause one and listen to the other for a while. Then go back. I even tried a Scott Walker collection album.

It's kind of funny how similar the album covers are.

https://img.discogs.com/MvqiaJcfeT5wuBBMKkeoC5tb7_g=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-1574343-1345055346-2065.jpeg.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3yRlRcHbPY

I guess I'll try a little harder... I'm going back to Scott Walker 4

I prefer Scott 3.

Scott's finest vocals imo are on Scott 3, I vastly rate that album over 4

wow jinx

I once thought as you, then listened to Scott 4 and Got It.

I believe it was William Joel who said, "It's all about soul."

Window dressing background music + window dressing voice don't work together. Something has got to give and my verdict seems to lean towards Scott Walker doesn't have much to give. I'm hearing hallmark tv-movie music on lots of these tracks.

I'm with you on most of his other material.