Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds — Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

The Grinderman is gone and Australia's favourite wandering, murder ballad-singing, ex-heroin-using frontman is back with his Bad Seeds. I admit I don't really love the group's last effort, the double-disc Abbatoir Blues, but Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! has made me forget my misgivings. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are once again one of the most creative and intense bands on Earth. From the lizard lounge stylings of the title track to the all-out rock of "Albert Goes West" and "We Call Upon The Author," this is, hands-down, one of the best efforts of Cave's lengthy career. The singer is at his poetic, vicious best on the latter track, singing, "I feel like a vacuum cleaner — a complete sucker/It's fucked up and he is a fucker/But what an enormous and encyclopedic brain/I call upon the author to explain." He's nearly this frantic on every one of the up-tempo tracks, and equally romantic on the ballads. Some musicians burn out as the years pass them by. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are inexplicably only getting better.