They have NICK CAVE polls now? I want one!: The ILM Nick Cave Poll Voting Thread (#106 in a series)

I am sure you're right - there are definitely songs/albums that I didn't connect with when I first heard them (this is going back 20-30 years tbh) that later I came to love, so I figure the stuff from the later years will eventually.

count 67 albums/EPs all up including live ones.

a bit fudgy because several live albums are compilations, but I'm calling this 18 live releases, not counting the Shell Shock opera that Cave wrote (the libretto), the album of which was recorded on the premiere performance.

ffs i mean it either is 67 or it isnt

lift yr game sic

:D

LOL.

So from the above (XXXXXXP), The Birthday Party LP and the Hee Haw EP are fine. But no-one should be getting into messy vote-splitting territory with the 13-track Hee Haw which collects the contents of both, yeah?

that sounds right to me, although it's gonna be tough to cram both Mutiny! and The Bad Seed into my top 5 (well maybe 10)

20 tracks might kill me but i am up to the challenge

h8 when sic is inexact

it ruins my day

posting bc this clip has been touted as nick being mean to billy corgan but tbf he’s just being Australian

also reminds me of my first interview which went about this well also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X1LThFfA8U

those were stupid generic questions tbh and if his response is "being Australian" then that is a very sensible way to be imo ... people should be more Australian

Revisiting Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! after probably 10 years and I’d forgotten how much it rips. “We Call Upon the Author” is a massive highlight this time around.

The Birthday Party LP

this is a singles comp (with two unreleased tracks) just as much as the Hee Haw compilation CD btw

(VG and mookie: two of the four Birthday Party Peel sessions were released as EPs in the 80s, but the other two only came out on the CD compilation in 2001; I counted each of the four as an EP for chronology's sake. I ask for neither forgiveness nor absolution, merely understanding)

YOU LET ME DOWN SIC idk what to tell u dog

wait it turns out there was an Australian Tour Edition of Love Letter that had four session tracks as the b-side! that counts as a live EP! just one more and I'll have made it up to you :(

too little too late imo

this is a singles comp (with two unreleased tracks) just as much as the Hee Haw compilation CD btw

It's a complete mess but the fact it has those further tracks and was released in the same year as "Happy Birthday", "Mr Clarinet" and "The Friend Catcher" (revisiting only 2/5 of the earlier Hee Haw EP) makes it way more album-y than the later compilation.

Anyway, I dig that era and will probably vote for any album-like release that ends up being allowed.

Suggest TuPOLLo for the results thread

^^^^^^^

TuPOLLooooooooooooo

this is a polling thread

a thread in which to poll

I Had A Dream POLL

way more album-y than the later compilation

yeah fair

this is a polling thread

a thread in which to poll

otm

Hamlet (POLL, POLL POLL)

so 67 releases to choose from ? Wow. any way of conveniently making that list visible? Then I'll just say we pick from those. otherwise there'll be ongoing doubt as to what makes the cut.

I don't strictly mind a whole deluge of live albums. I figure the more obscure ones won't get much of a look-in anyway, but it's nice to have the chice.

the CHOICE

I can ilx-format up the list, sure

side projects off the top...Cave did two duets with Anita Lane on

Anita's 1988 EP Dirty Sings has at least one Bad Seed on each track: A1 is written with Barry, who also plays bass; A2 is written with Nick; B1 is a cover of Lost In Music featuring Barry, Thomas and Nick (on organ); and B2 is written with Mick, who produced the record and probably plays on everything.

Nick also on backing vocals on "Lost In Music".

He also features on "Vixo" by Anni(e) Hogan from 1985.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJZ_WW2wBZo

Nick also on backing vocals on "Lost In Music".

Yes, ta - a whole chorus of Seeds doing the hook, such as it is in that version iirc. The arrangement eschews nearly all the melodic elements in the original, leaning into the rhythm and counterpoint in the vocal lines, but so hard that Anita is basically grumbling and snarling counterpoint to herself while the blokes chant. Melody's no good to me!

(I was familiar with the Anita version before the Chic/Sledge original, and may not have returned to it since getting my disco ears)

I had always thought Nick's vocal was particularly prominent but listening again now and it indeed seems to be a chorus of Bad Seeds singing.

It's worth returning to - a perennial fave here.

abbatoir blues/lyre of orpheus is really such an immense album, possibly my favourite. the band and cave's songwriting are both at something of a peak there, incredible playing and manages to nearly summarise their whole career up to that point in its wide range of styles, while still pushing into new territory with the gospel choir which works wonders.

agreed to me it's his peak no question

also really benefits from fantastic production which they hadn't really had very much up until that point

There were always jokes, kind of sly, sometimes kind of camp, but I want to say that "Abbatoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus" felt like the breakthrough when everyone realized Nick Cave was often being funny.

"Eurydice appeared brindled in blood
And she said to Orpheus
If you play that fucking thing down here
I'll stick it up your orifice!"

Grinderman and "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!" (which, yeah, is great) sort of continued in that vein, but for obvious reasons, perhaps, the last few have been less funny.

“There She Goes My Beautiful World” is a deep fave from Abbattoir Blues

more love for Abbatoir Blues / Lyre of Orpheus here - when it came out I was fairly over Nick Cave but I borrowed a friend's car and it was in the CD player and I was poleaxed by how good it was, you immediately had to recognise it as a great achievement

ever since then I've felt he was a next-level artist with an uncommon ability to still produce career-best work after decades at the coalface - i don't know his recent albums well enough to decide if they qualify, but Jubilee Street is right up there IMO

(I don't know how that song works! on paper i don't much like the lyrics and the riff is more from a blues-rock derived place than I usually prefer - and I think the recorded version is okay - but played live it is just immense! obviously it's the build, and the band's control of the build, but there's some other kind of alchemy at work - the "I'm vibrating / I'm transforming" bit really feels earned and hits home in some way that's beyond my comprehension)

There were always jokes, kind of sly, sometimes kind of camp, but I want to say that "Abbatoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus" felt like the breakthrough when everyone realized Nick Cave was often being funny.

Murder Ballads has several outright comedy songs, and he did three extremely serious / boring records afterward. But finished the last one with Babe, I'm On Fire, which packs more jokeyness into one song than most songwriter's careers, and then multiplies the silliness with the video.



((sidebar on the topic of Cave's 80s bandmates and their female associates faux-disdainfully covering the classics, I'll throw an off-topic mention to Barry, Mick, Genevieve McGuckin and Rowland & Lydia Lunch on Some Velvet Morning))

^^ big fave of mine, but yes not eligible

yeah "jubilee street" is a real highlight of the last decade, especially the live version which goes much further with its build in intensity. "higgs boson blues" is similarly great. push the sky away has a few tracks that are a little dull, but the rest is very very good. ghosteen is even better as an album and a real career high-point imo, it's the most beautiful music of his career, though it did take me a little while to get into with how reserved it is. the two epics on the second disc are especially powerful.

one of the things keeping me from really exploring Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen is the (presumed) emotional intensity - I guess I feel like they need a kind of sustained engagement that isn't part of my regular listening practice (well, re singer-songwriter stuff - will listen to "difficult" instrumental music for hours) - ie they don't feel like records you can just chuck on while you're folding the laundry

and ofc part of this is the inability to mentally separate the content of the records from the tragic circumstances of their creation - I feel sure they are impressive works but, as with sad films, I have to be in a particular frame of mind to take that journey

i don't find them to be that an intense a listen, not in the way that something like mount eerie's a crow looked at me is. most of skeleton tree was written & recorded before his son's death and so while that certainly thematically hangs over the already bleak tone of the album, only "i need you" was written afterwards and is probably the most direct about it. while ghosteen does actually deal with his son's death much more, it's still poetic about things in typical cave fashion so it's not an overwhelming listen. musically it's incredibly pretty, especially compared to skeleton tree's bleak tone, which helps balance out the lyrical material too. i have actually listened to it while cooking a fair bit.

I only gave each of them a "let's see what this is like" listen too, cautious of not having the fortitude to commit on a listening-to-lyrics level

anyway here's a list of 70 things that most people will consider as "albums or EPs with Nick Cave as a primary author"

*braces for formatting fuckup*

1979 Door, Door (BND LP)
1979 Hee Haw (BND EP)
1980 Peel Session 1 (BP CD 2001) LIVE
1980 The Birthday Party (BND/BP comp with two exc tracks and a rare b-side)
1981 Peel Session 2 (BP EP 1987) LIVE
1981 Prayers On Fire (BP LP)
1981 Peel Session 3 (BP EP 1988) LIVE
1982 Drunk On The Pope's Blood (BP live EP) LIVE
1982 Junkyard (BP LP)
1982 Peel Session 4 (BP CD 2001) LIVE
1982 Live 81-82 (BP live comp of 2 gigs) LIVE
1982 Honeymoon In Red (Lydia Lunch/BP LP 1987)
1983 Pleasure Heads Must Burn (BP live VHS (+ bonus tracks on DVD)) LIVE
1983 Mutiny! (BP EP)
1983 Burnin' The Ice (Die Haut LP w/ NC)
1983 The Bad Seed (BP EP)
1984 From Her to Eternity (Bad Seeds LP)
1985 The Firstborn Is Dead (Bad Seeds LP)
1986 Kicking Against the Pricks (Bad Seeds LP)
1986 Your Funeral... My Trial (Bad Seeds LP)
1988 Tender Prey (Bad Seeds LP)
1988 And The Ass Saw The Angel (audiobook EP)
1989 Ghosts ...Of The Civil Dead (OST by NC/MH/BB)
1990 The Good Son (Bad Seeds LP)
1990 Acoustic Versions Of Songs From "Tender Prey" Bad Seeds EP
1992 Henry's Dream (Bad Seeds LP)
1992 What A Wonderful World (Bad Seeds EP credited to NC & Shane McGowan)
1992 Live At The Paradiso (Bad Seeds live VHS/EP) LIVE
1993 Live Seeds (Bad Seeds live album) LIVE
1994 Let Love In (Bad Seeds LP)
1996 Murder Ballads (Bad Seeds LP)
1996 To Have And To Hold (OST by BB/NC/MH)
1996 The Flesh Made Word (reading on NC CD 2000)
1997 The Boatman's Call (Bad Seeds LP)
1998 The Secret Life Of The Love Song (Cave/Ellis/White/Stenger recording on NC CD 2000)
1998 Live at the Royal Albert Hall (Bad Seeds live album) LIVE
2001 No More Shall We Part (Bad Seeds LP)
2002 Love Letter "Westside Sessions" EP (Bad Seeds live EP) LIVE
2003 Nocturama (Bad Seeds LP)
2003 God Is In The House (Bad Seeds live DVD) LIVE
2004 Abattoir Blues (Bad Seeds LP)
2004 The Lyre of Orpheus (Bad Seeds LP)
2005 The Proposition (OST CD by NC & WE)
2007 Grinderman (GM LP)
2007 The Abattoir Blues Tour (Bad Seeds live album / DVD) LIVE
2007 The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (OST CD by NC & WE)
2008 Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (Bad Seeds LP)
2008 iTunes Live: London Sessions (Bad Seeds live EP) LIVE
2009 The Death Of Bunny Munro (7CD+DVD audiobook w NC/WE score)
2009 The Road (OST CD by NC & WE)
2009 White Lunar (disc 2 misc scores by NC & WE)
2010 Grinderman 2 (GM LP)
2012 Lawless (OST CD by NC & WE Present The Bootleggers)
2013 Push the Sky Away (Bad Seeds LP)
2013 Live from KCRW (Bad Seeds live album) LIVE
2014 West Of Memphis (OST CD by NC & WE)
2015 Loin Des Hommes (OST CD by NC & WE)
2015 The Sick Bag Song (2LP audiobook, no score)
2015 Live At Hammersmith Apollo (NC live album) LIVE
2015 Live At The Royal Albert Hall (NC live album) LIVE
2016 Hell or High Water (OST CD by NC & WE)
2016 Skeleton Tree (Bad Seeds LP)
2016 Shell Shock (opera by Nicholas Lens & Nick Cave: World Premiere Recording - Royal Opera House, La Monnaie, 2CD) LIVE
2017 Mars (OST CD by NC & WE)
2017 War Machine (OST CD by NC & WE)
2017 Wind River (OST CD by NC & WE)
2018 Kings (OST CD by NC & WE)
2018 Distant Sky: Live in Copenhagen (Bad Seeds live film / EP) LIVE
2019 Ghosteen (Bad Seeds LP)
2020 Idiot Prayer (Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace) (solo live album / film) LIVE

Bad Seeds LPs in bold so that folks who don't want to consider balloting anything else can skim

Something I've never quite been able to put my finger on is how Cave always seemed to play theaters or large clubs here (Chicago), up through "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!", but ever since then he's been playing huge venues, even arenas, of all places, ironically supporting his least likely room-filling albums, imo. I can't figure out what changed for him to go from decades of cult success to suddenly becoming a hot ticket at big places. (And yeah, I know the new songs work really well in those big rooms, against all odds, but the barnstormers do still blow things up bigger.)

my impression is it was mostly in europe where he's recently graduated into playing arenas, while he's still just playing large theatres/clubs etc. in the us mostly? i'm not quite sure exactly what it was either, but the huge critical success of skeleton tree probably had something to do with it, since it was really overwhelmingly acclaimed to a degree far beyond anything he'd done for a long time. seems like it was a relative commercial success too.

in Australia he took a big step up in venue size with Skeleton Tree too - to me it felt quite intentional, like playing bigger venues had probably been commercially viable for a while but they'd preferred playing in more intimate rooms?

I've been seeing Nick Cave shows (too!) regularly since Henry's Dream - and the Push The Sky Away show was in the smallest room I've ever seen him play (I think around 2000 capacity).

yeah afaik hes not doing that many arenas in the US (if any)

Hmm, looks like the postponed 2020 north american tour would have taken him to a few arenas in the usual places, plus larger places in smaller cities.

Here (in Glasgow) it took him around 25 years to go from playing 1000 - 2500 capacity venues. In 2015 he played to 2500 and then in 2017 he sold out a 13000 capacity venue.

ah was the rest of australia a step up in venue size for skeleton tree? here in brisbane he just played riverstage (a large amphitheatre), which is what he'd done the last few tours too. i wasn't able to see him though unfortunately. i hope it won't be too long before they tour ghosteen here if covid gets under control in the rest of the world next year.

I have (rescheduled) tickets to see him back at that 13000 capacity venue in April 2021 which seems highly likely to be rescheuled yet again.

oh damn, glad i'll be here for the very beginning! :D :D

TOO LOW

what is the most doofus nick cave fan? i am that guy in this poll, yelling out for the obvious hits

I feel like this poll must have attracted way more votes from 'strayans (ex-'strayans?) than the Go-Betweens did. Pretty sure I was joined overwhelmingly by Euro/American folk for that one, in terms of submitted ballots anyway. Then again, maybe there were just more ballots overall here?!?!

Which reminds me: I forgot to even consider voting for Tuff Monks!

The Tuff Monks is literally a piss-about jam that got bootlegged - with fifteen slots for side projects, it probably can stand to make room for more considered stuff (though I went quixotically tactical on my side-ballot tbh)

Rollout happening here btw: I ain't down here for your love or money, I'm down here for your POLL: The ILM Nick Cave Poll RESULTS Thread (#106 in a series)

Covers listening and voting thread rolling over here: TOWERS OF SONG: a Nick Cave Sings Covers listening thread and poll