Well, finally we may say that The Nick Cave Page starts at
the Sam Ulwards Album Reviews site! Some persons well known in the web waited
this for a long time (as I remember)... So what can we say about Nick Cave before
start of his albums reviews? Oh yes, it was the real bright star among a grey
mass of 80s and 90s music, excellent Rock Hero from faraway Australia who has
created his unique style with great poetry (it might be called as “narrative
lyrics”, and as usual Nick Cave in his songs tells the tales of somebody or
something) , intellectual images and excellent music. Who could think that an
ex-member of the local Australian punk-band (named Birthday Party) after his
departure from this band will record so fantastic albums, for example, such
masterpieces as > YOUR FUNERAL MY TRIAL, THE GOOD SON or THE BOATMAN’S
CALL. The creation of Nick Cave was always of obviously non-commercial
character (even his hit-album MURDER BALLADS with well-known WHERE THE WILD
ROSES GROW and HENRY LEE was created for not the commercial purposes, at least
not only for them). You may say that his music was influenced by Bob
Dylan and Leonard Cohen and you’ll be right; it’s true he improved
some of their ideas as the ideas of J.J. Cale, Jim Morrison, Peter Hammill,
Tom Waits (I guess that Cave’s creation was also influented by this
artists sometimes), but with no doubt Nick Cave always had a lot of his own
ideas that were damn good!
Cave’s creation is characterized by pretty different ways: after very nice prog-oriented
THE GOOD SON he has released simple folk-music oriented HENRY’S
DREAM, after agressive and “mortal” MURDER BALLADS he has created
balladering and religion-inspired THE BOATMAN’S CALL. In the
same albums you can hear wild noisy rockers, avant garde psychedelic “wailings”
and wonderful ballads – so he could be suitable for every taste. Officially
Nick Cave always released his records as “Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds”, but
it’s only a brand, because all the ideas were born from the Nick’s head, and
the line-up changed oftenly. So we may call this page as “Nick Cave Albums Reviews”.
Nick Cave shows his “transforming period” from underground/punk
of his past band The Birthday Party to the Classical Nick Cave
(ha! Sounds like the name of the actual album – FROM HER TO ETERNITY!).
Already on this album you can find “the frames” and “basic constructions” of
the future creation of Nick: depressive and internally-strained sound, clever
lyrics and, of course, this especial deep, gloomy and low vocal by Nick. The
album starts with slow psychedelic cover-version of Leonard Cohen’s
AVALANCHE. This track is characterized by very quiet sound with sudden
rushes of volume inspired by war-like and angry beats of drums and bass guitar
after each verse, the of the rest time you basically can hear the Nick’s gloomy
voice and low guitar on a back-side. But don’t think that the song is a gentle
ballad, oh no, it’s a perfect absurd to think so; for example, Black
Sabbath has no such dark record in their whole discography catalog...
I really like this composition (my favorite one of the album), it impressed
me very much from the 1st time. And though AVALANCHE could sound a little monotonous
for somebody, don’t believe to what it seems to you :o), it holds you in strain
till the end, great song! The next track CABIN FEVER! is also characterized
by depressive atmosphere of Nick’s voice and aggressive rhythm-section. As in
the opening track there are many sound-effects by electric-guitar, but the song
isn’t so interesting in musical sense. Yes the vocal is very sincere, but it’s
only like a desperate roaring of a man who just had some drugs. The third track
WELL OF MISERY has a blues rhythm but nothing of blues else. Again it’s especially
inspired by very impressive and sincere vocal, good lyrics and gloomy feelings.
I like it more than the previous track, because this song also has good harmonica
parts (in 80s Nick often successfully used this instrument, and this makes such
songs rather close to the sound of American classical blues of 40s and early
50s – Muddy Waters, Leadbelly, etc).
The track no.4 on the album is the title track, and again it’s constructed by
rather avant garde minimalistic rhythm section and depressive mood; again you
can listen low bass and crazy piano, simple but very unusual drum-beats and
sharp angry vocal – the side-1 of the LP is of the same line, I need to admit.
Yes, the song is good as it is, even if there’s almost no some melody at all.
But the next song has the melody, and the melody is very good + very nice arrangement.
And it has very simple, but very actual (and nowadays too) text about young
men of ghettos, reservations, refugees and suchlike, who rarely have perspectives
to refuse their poor lives and not to be thieves, murderers or simply “problematic
persons”. I never was in American ghettos, but personally I know a lot of similar
places (even worse ones) in Tashkent (the capitol of Uzbekistan), where I lived
till 2001 – there are some districts are full of drinkers and small criminals;
this districts are not installed by such necessary things as hot water, central
heating and even sewerage (imagine what kind of smells are there! Especially
at hot summer). So let’s turn to the song: Cave sings without roaring, but by
his natural nice low-bass-voice; the instrumental part is nicely arranged by
some kind of winds, and this makes the common sound of the composition rather
pathetic. So we may say it’s a classical kind of Cave’s ballads. And then we
have another ballad THE MOON IS IN THE GUTTER, and it’ s very good again. Not
so nice as previous rack but not less impressive though. It’s characterized
by rather atonal vocal and psychedelic sound (a little bit). The song is shorter
than other ones (2,5 minutes), it’s reminds me some of 70s Peter Hammill’s records.
The next one SAINT HUCK turns us into the dark atmosphere of the side one, and
this song is maybe the most depressive and desperate on the album. It starts
with the word “achtung” and tells us a story of “somebody who was born of the
river”, yes, the lyrics are rather strange. There’re a lot of different industrial
sounds and sound effects, but the most interesting is some kind of winds, which
sounds very quiet (you hardly can hear it), but it creates very dark mystic
atmosphere. I hardly can say that Nick sings here, he just narrates some meditative
story, his voice is very strained and sharp. And as usual with such kind of
tracks this song doesn’t contain especial melody... The next track WINGS OFF
FLIES is the funny number about how Nick Cave disturbs the wings of poor insects
and have a great pleasure of it, as it seems to me. And I think he compares
his unsuccessful love of the past with this flies, he tries to forget this woman
as if he tears the wings of fly away. Again the song is inspired by 40s-50s
blues, this song is not so depressive, but not so soft and nice as IN THE GHETTO,
for example; it’s the slow-rocking record with unusual rhythm-section and good
impressive vocals. I really like this track.
And the closing track of the album is piano-based A BOX FOR A BLACK PAUL (it
reminds me Peter Hammill’s dark style again); this composition
is really dark and gloomy, though the music is very suitable for its lyrics.
The song is good, though it’s too long (9 minutes of Nick’s depressive poetry
and minor piano-chords, no more!), so the composition can seem rather monotyped
to you. CD version also contains 1987 version of the title track, which is a
minute shorter than the original version. It has no big difference, only some
changes in arrangement: it’s a little bit faster plus some additions in sound
effects (and by this effects this version reminds me something from Tom Waits’s
1983-1987 albums, their “industrial noises”). I think this 1987 version is even
more interesting than the album-version. I won’t recommend to you to buy this
album if you haven’t another albums by Nick Cave, it’s not the best starting
point for the listening the Australian musician (for this purpose you better
buy his THE GOOD SON, YOUR FUNERAL MY TRIAL, TENDER PREY or LET LOVE
IN). Though if you like Nick Cave (especially his non-balladering records)
this album is for you.
Any comments or reviews to grant us with?