Divided between originals and covers, the record is awash in both morbid humor and sobering horror, as the Bad Seeds provide an appropriate backdrop for the carnage, alternating between blues, country, and lounge-jazz. It is the most disturbing number on the record, lacking any of the gallows humor that balances out the other songs. With that record Cave had finally delivered what everyone knew he was capable of: an entire album of deeply tragic and beautiful love songs without irony, sarcasm, or violent resolution.
The ballads have the wide, spacious, sobering ambience one has come to expect from the Bad Seeds. There is an ethereal change in sound in the up-tempo numbers, which are, for lack of better terminology, musical novellas. They plumb the depths of blues, yet contain glissando and crescendos from the orchestral music of composers such as Fartein Valen and Olivier Messiaen.
Gone is the angry, humorous cynic whose venom and bile touched even his lighter moments. His deep taunting ambivalence about Jesus Christ and Christianity in general is gone, vanished into a maturity that ponders spiritual things contemplatively. It is examined concretely and abstractly; to the point where it meditates on this theme even cinematically.
His methodology for the listener is, even though these are intimate conversations, the effect is illustrated in widescreen. There is powerful emotion here, spiritual, psychological and romantic, without a hint of the sentimentality that would make it false.
As both a singer and a songwriter, his work has been transformed into something so full of depth, color, and dimension, that there is simply no one except his mentors working on this level in popular music.
Who can argue with him? It is truly sad when artists with great vision and imagination, whose work is filled with power and beauty, just kind of lose it all at once. This could be the first record Nick Cave has made that feels like he is just doing it because it is his job to make records and be Nick Cave.
Everything is predictable and sounds like something Cave has done before. This could be the first Bad Seeds track to sport a depressingly standard guitar solo over the fade. Longtime Cave fans may need to reach for the smelling salts after hearing it. There are also a couple of songs that revisit the old storm-and-bang days of the Birthday Party and early Bad Seeds. One might say these forays into noisy, aggressive post-punk are commendable or one could say he is treading water he puked out 20 years ago.
Apart from that track, Cave sounds like a writer on his 15th book with nothing much left to say, nothing left to do but go through the motions, phoning his performance in with a yawn. His fans should send him a message by leaving Nocturama his worst record title ever to gather dust on record store and warehouse shelves. His laziness and weak effort should not be rewarded with your hard-earned cash. His tense, ambivalent obsession with theology is pervasive; he mocks the Western perception of God in the heavens yet seeks the mystery of His nature.
That he does so while careening through a wall of noisy rock damage is simply stunning. It leaves the listener revved up and off-center for what comes next. The pace is fantastic; its drama and musical dynamics are pitched taut, with lulls in all the right places.
The Lyre of Orpheus, by contrast, is a much quieter, more elegant affair. It is more consciously restrained, its attention to craft and theatrical flair more prevalent.
But on this album, along with the gentleness, is experimentation with textures and wider dimensions. This set is an aesthetic watermark for Cave, a true high point in a long career that is ever looking forward. Apparently, the Bad Seeds side project Grinderman injected some serious adrenaline into the equation, evidenced mightily on Dig!!!
Streams Videos All Posts. My Profile. Advanced Search. Born September 22, in Warracknabeal, Victoria, Australia. Burnin' the Ice. Hit Thing. From Her to Eternity. The Firstborn Is Dead. Kicking Against the Pricks. Your Funeral My Trial. Tender Prey. Of the Civil Dead. Restless Records. The Good Son. Henry's Dream. Live Seeds. Let Love In.
Murder Ballads. The Boatman's Call. Live at the Royal Albert Hall. And the Ass Saw the Angel. No More Shall We Part. Warner Bros. The Proposition [Original Soundtrack]. The Abattoir Blues Tour. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! The Road [Original Score]. Lakeshore Records. Lawless [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack].
Sony Classical.
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