Badass Archival Footage Of Nick Cave

I asked my cousin the other day if he liked Nick Cave and he goes,

"I'm not that into him"

Or something like that.

Spoiler alert: This video will make you "into him."

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - White Lunar

I have to confess, unless it’s a movie soundtrack with a hefty blend of songs that fit nicely in the mix of the film, I rarely pay much attention to the music featured in movies. If it’s a movie score, forget about it. I appreciate how a score can bring emotional stock to a film and understand that modern day scoring is the closest thing that we may have in terms of classical composition, but it’s not anything that I feel the need to examine further.

There are a few exceptions to this, but I’d be hard pressed to name a soundtrack that spoke to me on any real meaningful level.

Or so I thought.

I sat down with Nick Cave & Warren Ellis’ White Lunar recently, a double disc collection of the pair’s soundtrack work a prepared for something uneventful. I will confess to not bothering to read the press material or familiarizing myself with the movies that this collection is gleaned from.

Within a few moments, however, I recognized something. A piece from the cd stood out and my attention turn to answer the question “Where have I heard this from?”

The answer was Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and the song that prompted my attention was “What Must Be Done,” a brief two-minute piece with little more than a repeated piano phrase. Surely, this was not the kind of thing that would leave such a lasting impression on its own, so it should only demonstrate the power that music has-even the most simplistic of compositions-when properly placed with just the right moving image.

The Jesse James material is housed with The Proposition and the forthcoming film The Road on disc one. With the selections from the film to Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, White Lunar begins its travails into ambient territory. Prior to this, the first disc sticks to mostly Cave performing a plaintive piano with Ellis providing effortless violin work.

It’s with disc two that the material evolves more in to the “film score” realm, an eerie combination of Angelo Badalamenti atmospherics with Ellis’ previous work with the Dirty Three. It culminates with “Sorya Market,” a piece from the The Girls of Phnom Penh. For three minutes, the song continues White Lunar’s beautiful restraint. Then, after ten minutes of silence, the song erupts into atonal shrieks, hyper-bowed violins, and industrial noises. It’s unsettling-that’s the intent, obviously, and it serves as a wake up to remind the listener of the dangerous territory that both of these men originate from.

White Lunar won’t capture the imagination of new fans or encourage novices to pursue more notable moments of Cave’s illustrious career. What it does is find two talented men inspired by the imagination of their celluloid counterparts and using-quite effectively-their musical abilities to create memorable moments that stay with you after the credits roll.

This review originall appeared in Glorious Noise.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away

Endlessly endearing and enviably talented, Nick Cave returns with the Bad Seeds and another left turn, this time even more noticeable since the last effort (Dig Lazarus Dig) was such a raucous affair.

We should probably come to expect this from Cave, as Murder Ballads bequeath Boatman’s Call, and therefore it should come as no surprise that album number fifteen is the quiet and reflective Push The Sky Away.

It took me several listens to wrap my head around this record, and I think the delay was nothing but the shock of hearing Cave sound his age again, and the reality is that it may take a traveled person to really appreciate what’s going on with this record.

Because its simplicity is deceiving, but it also enables you to appreciate the beauty that comes from Cave’s distinctive voice and the wonderful draw of his words.

It’s what kept me coming back-those words. They’re filled with big, curious themes. Some of which he’s explored before, but that doesn’t mean they’re worth reviewing. After all, weighty topics like mortality, love, religion and mermaids sometimes need a second glance.

With the additional look, you’ll hear such incredible details like “I watch your hands like butterflies landing” right next to such naughty musings as “I was the match that would fire up her snatch.”

Producer Nick Launay wisely leaves Cave’s voice out in front, highlighting its age when needed, its desperation when it’s called for, and its dark perversion when everything else fails.

The Seeds find Warren Ellis again stepping up with remarkable restraint and incredible intuitiveness. Basic loop structures are introduced with very little else added to the mix; a spare piano, a lone guitar and a simple rhythm are usually the rest of the performances. The bare atmosphere that is created throughout the album makes it something dark and timeless.

Push The Sky Away is subtle masterpiece that is diminished only by the artist’s already impressive catalog. But to be honest, after my own repeated listens there is nothing else in the man’s work that I’d rather listen to at this moment.

Boys Next Door - "Shivers"

This song makes me feel like a fruity little high school boy with eyeliner. But it also reminds me how Nick Cave has been cooler than anyone you'll ever know for over three decades now. Here's a glimpse from the first couple of cool years.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig!! Lazarus Dig!!

Coming off the wonderful return to dirtyass rock of Grinderman, Nick Cave resumes his work with the Bad Seeds with an album more akin to the raucous nature of that aforementioned project. The difference is that Ginderman sounded like a man kicking out some guttural mid-life crisis, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! sounds like a man baptized again on the alter of seedy six strings.
Marginally more restrained than Grinderman, Cave has instead focused on placing the negative energy in his words instead of merely turning up the amps. Placed against other performer’s mid-career work, one is hard pressed to find a reference point as consistently great as Lazarus.
And when you’re able to, you suddenly discover the kind of company that Nick Cave is in with. By now, it’s time to start realizing that he’s rubbing shoulders with people like Dylan and Cohen, and there’s no better moment to start diving into his wide body of work with this, an impeccably written and perfectly arranged statement from a man who’s delivering some of the best material on an already remarkable career.
This is my favorite kind of Cave; I consider Live Seeds as the best Nick Cave album ever on the merits that you can almost smell the sweat, booze and pussy that exudes over each song. Seriously: I’d trust my daughter more with the members of Motley Crue than with Nick Cave because there’s always this bad feeling that he’d not only be able to talk her into sleeping with him, but robbing a convenience store afterwards and killing the clerk in the process.
Lazarus is cut from similar cloth, forgoing any evidence of studio tools and relying on the band to create a menagerie that alternates between sublime and terrifying.
Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! goes deeper than merely reaffirming Cave’s well-known role as a cocksmith and lifetime member of The Sons of Lee Marvin. Back in fine form is Reverend Cave, who reworks the Lazarus into a modern-day parable where Lazarus, now known by “Larry,” spends the time after his resurrection roaming the streets of N.Y.C. circa 1977, bitterly offering how he “never asked to be raised up from the tomb.”
Is it a coincidence that Cave chose to release this around Easter, or is the implication that he, now into his fifth decade, is experiencing a resurrection of his own, finding new life in the blasphemy of rock? Whatever the holiday, religion, or position, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is one of Cave’s best, proving that he has himself ascended to a level of holy proportions.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise

Grinderman - Grinderman

As an honorary member of The Sons Of Lee Marvin, Nick Cave is an acknowledged bad ass. He knows it, but the great thing is, you typically don’t hear him going on and on about how cool he is. Cave is one of those rare individuals that just seem to exude it.
Grinderman, the curiously labeled Nick Cave side-project that really isn’t a side-project in the strictest sense of the word (count it: almost half of The Bad Seeds play on the album), shows him making quite a racket for a guy that will turn 50 this September.
He’s been showing his age on his last few albums, and that’s not to suggest that they’ve been necessarily bad albums; they’ve just been filled with the grand arrangements of an elder statesman who seemed fairly content with turning into rock’s supreme literary balladeer.
Apparently, Cave wanted to make at least one more noisy rock album before contending with how the autumn of his career will ultimately take shape. Grinderman’s self-titled “debut” is the result of that revision, as it hints at the Birthday Party noise that brought Cave his initial acclaim as well as some garage rock elements that wouldn’t have felt out of place on The Stooges’ “comeback” album if someone had told Iggy that his new material sucked ass.
Nick makes Iggy sound like a retard, even when both gentlemen set out to remind the public of their cocksmith abilities. While Pop compares his dick to a tree, Cave harks that he “drank panther piss and fucked the girls you’re probably married to” (“Get It On”). There’s a big part of me that thinks Nick has seen the scene from Anchorman where Brian Fontana whips out his secret stash of Sex Panther; Grinderman is filled with hints of this type of lyricism, so you know it’s good.
Cave is very much aware of his increasing age and the effects it’s taking on the public’s image of him as well as his own self-image. “No Pussy Blues,” “My face is finished/My body’s gone” he admits before tries to seduce a young fan. Even after some preparation (“I changed the sheets on my bed/I combed the hairs across my head/I sucked in my gut and still she said/That she just didn’t want to”) he yells “Damn!” before a distorted wah-wah guitar kicks him in his old ass while screaming “I got the no pussy blues!”
On “Go Tell The Women,” Cave (who sounds much more adapted at piano than his amateurish guitar playing would indicate) plods along with an out of tune guitar phrase, over a repeated mandolin and drum shuffle while deadpanning: “All we wanted was a little consensual rape in the afternoon/And maybe a bit more in the evening.”
Even at his increasing age, Nick hasn’t lost his dark sense of humor.
My favorite Nick Cave album has always been Live Seeds from 1993. I like it because it’s raw and it provides the set with an unhinged feeling, which makes them more powerful. Grinderman is very similar in a sense, as the racket Cave and his cohorts create not only illustrate the humor of the material; they manage to make the shadows of them even darker. This ultimately makes Grinderman one of Cave’s brightest moments even if his days are getting shorter.
One can only hope that other iconic rock artists have a mid-life crisis like this.