Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: an immense, dense, richly rewarding body of work as compiled by lifelong superfan and Cave afficionado Fenner Pearson. God is in the house!
UP JUMPED THE DEVIL: LOVE LETTERS FROM NICK CAVE
Words & curation by Fenner Pearson, cover art by Lina Moon
The first Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds album was released to little fanfare on the 18th of June 1984, to be followed over the next thirty-five years by a further sixteen studio albums. It’s an immense, dense, and richly rewarding body of work. One could write playlists based around the recurring themes in his writing, of love, loss, violence, and horror, all of which are consistently underpinned by both intelligence and dark humour. (Nick never needed to take himself too seriously; we could – and would – do that for him). There are songs of murder and violence; many surprising and multi-faceted paeans to love; insightful studies of humanity; and the humour, grace, and inventiveness of Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds.
So while I could write you an essay and compile you a playlist based on any one of those themes, what I’m attempting here is a taster menu that will leave you hungry for more and ready to explore some of his richer dishes and those that are a little more of an acquired taste. We shall trip lightly together through the more immediate songs of his back catalogue, to introduce the newcomer and interested listener to the works of this most extraordinary artist.
It’s for this reason that we will start with his sixth album, The Good Son. Cave had been putting out pretty much an album a year since leaving The Birthday Party but it was on this album that everything gelled for the first time: the song-writing, the performance, and, crucially, The Bad Seeds, now including Mick Harvey, Thomas Wydler, and Blixa Bargeld who would be stalwarts of the band for years to come. (Fear not, in just a few paragraphs time we will dabble with some earlier tracks, as you’ll see).
And so we begin with what would become one of Cave’s most enduring and popular songs, ‘The Ship Song’. It’s a love song, of course, with a twist of violence that is often overlooked by the would-be paramours perhaps seeking to seduce through the medium of song, with a lyric that ranges from “Come sail your ships around me/And burn your bridges down/We make a little history, baby/Every time you come around” to “Your face has fallen sad now/For you know the time is nigh/When I must remove your wings/And you, you must try to fly”. Classic Nick.
I’ve twinned this with ‘The Weeping Song’ from the same album, a dark yet tongue-in-cheek duet between Nick and his foil – and, I think, artistic muse – Blixa Bargeld. I always loved this when it was played live, delivered poker-faced but with clear affection between the two men.
It is from here that we proceed to what is and has always been my favourite Nick Cave album, possibly because it was the first album I owned by him. My partner gave me Henry’s Dream as a birthday present and it would have been churlish to say “No thanks, he’s not my cup of tea” so I played it in the car and over a matter of weeks I fell deeply and, it transpired, irrevocably in love with it. To be honest, I could happily include the whole album here but I have managed to whittle it down to three: ‘Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry’; the spectacular and aching ‘When I First Came To Town’; and ‘Brother, My Cup Is Empty’.
It would be impossible to pick one line-up of the Bad Seeds or one tour to say when it would have been best to see Cave live but the tour for the ‘Henry’s Dream’ gave rise to the Live Seeds album, which was in turn promoted by The Tin Tour, which was the first time I saw him play live. It was extraordinary. I’ve included here three tracks from Live Seeds, which are themselves drawn from early Nick Cave albums: ‘From Her To Eternity’ from his debut album of the same name; perennial fan favourite ‘The Mercy Seat’ plus ‘Deanna’ from Tender Prey. (I’d also encourage you to seek out ‘Tupelo’.)
The success of ‘Henry’s Dream’, its tour, and the Golden Age incarnation of the Bad Seeds, led to the 1994 album, Let Love In, which was powerful, self-assured, and witty. Cave’s confidence as a songwriter and lyricist are apparent in both ‘Loverman’ and ‘Red Right Hand’, as is the Bad Seeds talent and swagger: an alternative E Street Band and no mistake.
I’m tempted to think that the follow up album, Murder Ballads, was a demonstration by Cave that he wasn’t taking himself too seriously. Here he hammed up his gothic reputation with a series of songs all about death and murder, including his first and only hit, ‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’, a duet with, surprisingly, Kylie Minogue! Not as strong as his previous two outings, it’s still a good album, with my personal favourites being ‘Crow Jane’ and the none-more-sweary ‘Stagger Lee’, the video to which is one of my top three favourites of all time.
I must confess that I was at first disappointed by his next album, The Boatman’s Call although I have come to appreciate it over time. The Bad Seeds were all but absent and the entire record proceeds at a stately pace, opening with the sedate ‘Into My Arms’. Concerned at least in part by the end of his romance with PJ Harvey, there is a bitterness and resentment in places, but even so both ‘People Ain’t No Good’ and ‘Far From Me’ are excellent songs. I found succour in a couple of the b-sides from this period and I’ve included ‘Babe, I Got You Bad’ in the playlist.
Things improved a little for me personally with the follow up No More Shall We Part, although, with hindsight, I’d say The Boatman’s Call is the better work. To be honest, I was still hankering for more (and louder!) participation from the Bad Seeds but there is a lot of beauty to be found on the album. The (almost) title track, ‘And No More Shall We Part’ appears to meander aimlessly before a transformative lift at 2:24, where it becomes a thing of beauty. I’d say there’s more than a handful of good songs on the album and I’ve also included ‘’God Is In The House’.
For me, the chink in the armour of Cave’s catalogue is 2003’s Nocturama, but this was followed the next year by an artistically reinvigorated double album, Abattoir Blues and The Lyre Of Orpheus. Sprawling and a little unstructured in places, both albums make for good listening individually and as a pairing. After some chin-scratching, I’ve opted for the Steve Harley indebted ‘There She Goes My Beautiful World’, ‘O Children’ (oddly, featured in ‘Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows’ for Harry’s dance with Hermione), and ‘Supernaturally’.
Hand on my heart, I have to say that my passion for Nick Cave had been in a state of slow decline as the century turned. I would never miss a chance to see him with the Bad Seeds and I still listened regularly to almost all his albums, but I felt that his fire was headed for its embers. How very wrong I was! In 2007 he released an album called Grinderman by a group of the same name, consisting of Cave plus Bad Seeds Warren Ellis (primarily violin), Martyn P Casey (bass), and Jim Sclavunos on drums. I’ve taken the liberty of including the title track here - it is, after all, Nick Cave and some of the Bad Seeds - but this was my favourite release by him for ten years. It’s a fantastic album.
It’s undeniable that Grinderman informed the next recording by Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, ‘Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!’. Raw, prowling, sexy, and dangerous in places but also experimental and musical, I’ve attempted to cover all of this with the following tracks: ‘Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!’; the incredible ‘Night Of The Lotus Eaters’; and the beautiful ‘Jesus Of The Moon’. Live, it was clear that everyone was enjoying playing the new material: the band was rejuvenated.
It was five years until a follow up appeared, the calmer and – hooray! – more electronic Push The Sky Away. In many ways, this album sets the course for the Bad Seeds releases to date. I’m slightly surprised to see that I’ve included more tracks from this album than any other, which must say something. In some ways it struck me at the time as the result of a regrouping as it seems to draw, to varying degrees, on every Bad Seeds album over the years. Cave’s lyrics and performance are assured, nuanced, and delivered with an apparent effortlessness that takes, well, fifteen albums to achieve. Ditto the Seeds, themselves. Just listen to ‘We Know Who U R’, ‘Jubilee Street’, ‘Higgs Bosun Blues’, and ‘Push The Sky Away’.
It was during the recording of the subsequent Skeleton Tree that Cave’s son Arthur died in an accident. Cave consequently amended some of his lyrics although I suspect the overall feel of the album was already established. It can be a difficult listen but do dip a toe in with ‘Jesus Alone’ and ‘Rings Of Saturn’. It is a beautiful and haunting album. 2019’s Ghosteen is an epic and ambitious piece and, to be honest, it’s still too recent for me to talk about it with any objectivity. I can, however, recommend ‘Leviathan’ with it’s bluesy coda “I love my baby and my baby loves me’.
I have little doubt that any other Nick Cave fan you find would give at least parts of my list the side-eye; he is, after all, many things to many people, and with such a vast body of work to draw on it would be bizarre if any two fans drew on the same pieces. But, after nearly thirty years of loving Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, these are my suggestions to you.
I hope you enjoy them!
Idiot Prayer Post Script
For many, many years, seeing Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds playing live was pretty much an annual treat. From the Town and Country Club where I first saw them through venues up and down England and Scotland (and even Amsterdam) seeing Cave and his band perform was always thrilling, captivating, and uplifting (even if that pleasure has been a little diluted by the larger venues he fills these days).
Playing his songs to an audience is obviously a huge pleasure to Cave and I can fully appreciate the frustrations the lockdown brought to his door in this regard. Consequently, I was delighted to see him mitigate his enforced abstinence with a solo performance at Alexandra Palace earlier this year, a recording of which has been released.
It is for the most part a sedate affair but there are some gems in there, nonetheless. Avoiding the songs already on the playlist, I’ve selected a further three for this postscript: a surprising and wonderful revisiting to Grinderman’s ‘Palaces Of Montezuma’ (which I really didn’t see coming); ‘Nobody’s Baby Now’ from ‘Let Love In’; and finally the desolate hope of ‘(Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For’ from ‘The Boatman’s Call’.
Playback notes: Play in order to tell the story so far, of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - but never skip genius.
Fenner Pearson is presenter and curator, Electronic Ears. Check out Lina Moon’s artwork on Instagram
Nick Cave’s Idiot Prayer live recording is his latest album release. The accompanying film is a breathtaking watch and screening are being rescheduled for early 2021: https://www.idiotprayerfilm.com/