PRIMER: Get to know Nick Cave, and his three-decades of musical output

Feb 17, 2012

by CHARTattack Robot

If you have a list of alternative icons you’d love to get into but don’t know where to start, get ready to cross some of them off thanks to our new feature GET TO KNOW. Every Friday CHARTattack will guide you through the highs, lows, and occasional confusing bits of the careers of renowned indie icons.

This week, Stephen Stanford guides us through the peasoup fog of Australian rocker Nick Cave’s illustrious career.

Over his forty year career, Australian dynamo Nick Cave has so cemented himself as an alternative icon, neophytes may find themselves understandably daunted by the sheer volume of his work: two bands that have achieved sacred cow status, eighteen albums and counting, and five novels and screenplays.

The man is as prolific as he is mutable, the changing of his image over the years from screeching emaciated heroin addict who probably slept hanging upside down in a Viennese church, to international avant-god to heavily mustachioed man of letters was kept in lockstep with a fascinating musical evolution from bleeding edge post-punk into a stupefying pell-mell of blues, traditional, folk, & gothic rock, all the while maintaining a confidence and flair that makes the whole cacophenous experience seem completely organic. He also fucked PJ Harvey, Kylie Minogue (probably), and has an inexhaustible supply of perfectly tailored suits.

So, where does one begin? For the purposes of elucidation and to spare you the risk of ending up a dope fiend/murderer/Jesuit (in that order) from listening to every Bad Seeds album in a row, what follows is a chronology of selected tracks that will introduce you to the various themes and styles that make the Black Crow King experience so engaging, scary, and sexy.

From Her To Eternity (From Her To Eternity, 1984)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1uVDZ9Gpcg

The eponymous track off the Bad Seeds’ debut album, I chose this particular rendition as performed in Wim Wender’s classic Wings of Desire because it illustrates some important initial concepts: the crazed, circus-like, pseudo-Weimar bacchanalia against which the Bad Seeds formed in West Berlin underground back in the early 1980s, Cave’s strained baritone, the splashes of Afro-American traditionalism, and the notion that he’s either really pissed or really sad about a girl but it’s hard to tell which.

I’m Gonna Kill That Woman (Kicking Against The Pricks, 1986)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpDVYbBtV1k

Despite being a covers album, Kicking Against the Pricks is essential listening as it represents the shift from the Bad Seeds’ status as a companion project of The Birthday Party to Cave’s central focus. It’s a collection of mostly traditional Americana plunged into a deranged acid bath, and, as the title of the album implies, shows just how irresistible Cave finds the African-American roots of popular music to be. Enjoy his rendition of John Lee Hooker’s I‘m Gonna Kill That Woman, but maybe wear headphones if your girlfriend is present.

The Mercy Seat (Tender Prey, 1988)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahr4KFl79WI&ob=av3e

The closest thing Nick Cave has to a Hey Jude, this is the iconic song that’s performed at every show without reservation (and it got covered by Johnny Cash, so there’s something). It tells the story of a nihilistic death row inmate and is a great example of just how erudite and gifted Cave is a lyricist and storyteller, a quality that should lead the listener to seek out copies of Cave’s two excellent novels, And the Ass Saw The Angel & The Death of Bunny Munroe (or just watch The Proposition, a superb Cave penned Australian Neo-Western directed by The Road‘s John Hillcoat). Bonus points for introducing the listener to Cave’s career long obsession with Christian dogmatism, apocrypha, and the Gospel.

Brother, My Cup Is Empty (Henry’s Dream, 1992)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB4p6W5PVuc

Perhaps the last of Cave’s original “kill her then yourself” school of songs about scorned lovers, this is a rollicking and karaoke-primed number that marries traditionalist vocabulary and old-school blues imagery with the discordant hell spawned jam band quality that the Bad Seed’s are famous for.

Loverman (Let Love In, 1994)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P51IVqf28Hs&ob=av3e

Brash, loud, lustful, and pissed – this is Cave at his purest. When picking a track from Let Love In, it was either this one or the classic Red Right Hand but I figured it’s presence on the Dumb & Dumber and Scream soundtracks probably makes Loverman the less well known of the two and therefore gives this whole article more credibility. Let Love In as a whole is a knockout anyway and is probably the most accessible album Cave ever made, so just pretend I listed every track.

Into My Arms (The Boatman’s Call, 1997)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAOL_w2Ujo

There is a case for saying the Nick Cave got a little soft around the turn of the century. The albums got longer, softer, heavy on melodic lead piano and balladry. But it’s understandable. The man was nearing fifty, had begun a middle-age return to academia, and didn’t seem as mad about women as he used to be. The Boatman’s Call is a somber and reflective album, and Into My Arms is a gentle and sweet centerpiece that displays a gracious and mature grasp on the interminable nature of love not seen in the work from his wilder years.

Babe I’m On Fire (Nocturama, 2003)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcJGalE3vn0

I’m going to close the piece with this one, a relentless, anthemic, fifteen minute long rant-song that shows that even at fifty years old, Nick Cave doesn’t seem to be slowing down. I’d like to thing that it’s placing on the closing number on 2003′s expectedly soft Nocturama was deliberate, a wink from the auteur that he was getting ready to throw things back into high gear for the emergence of his bearded garage-rock project Grinderman and the Bad Seeds’ manic fourteenth album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

PRIMER: Get to know Nick Cave, and his three-decades of musical output

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