Sorry, life happens! I’ll see you next week!

Sorry, life happens! I’ll see you next week! Nothing too serious, just busy and so this will have to take a pause.

7. “O Children” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: An Artist A Week/A Song A Day – A History of Alternative Music

7. “O Children” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds 

(From the album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus)

2004

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds followed up The Boatman’s Call and finished out the 20th century by releasing The Best Of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds in 1998. However, Cave had relapsed into serious heroin and alcohol addictions and it was four years between The Boatman’s Call and 2001’s No More Shall We Part which wove the quieter and more atmospheric style of The Boatman’s Call into the larger Cave formula. No More Shall We Part was another critical success for Cave & The Bad Seeds but much of the commercial momentum was lost (although it was unlikely to have continued anyway as Cave doesn’t really make pop music). 2003 saw the release of Nocturama which was recorded over a week and reunited Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds with producer Nick Launay, who had worked with Cave and guitarist Mick Harvey when they had been in The Birthday Party a quarter century ago. Nocturama would also be the final album with longtime Bad Seed Blixa Bargeld in the fold as he would leave the band shortly after completing the record. 2004 saw the return of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds with the double album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus. Technically not a double album but two separate and distinct albums packaged together Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus is nevertheless an impressive body of work with the first record Abattoir Blues is the rock-oriented record while The Lyre Of Orpheus is a quieter, more atmospheric affair rooted in the sound of The Boatman’s Call and Cave’s other more subtle work. Both records are strong and the album earned a surprising amount of renewed attention in 2010 when the final song of the record “O Children” was used in the film Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows – Part 1. Since the release of Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus in 2004 Nick Cave has continued to release critically acclaimed albums that speak to his large and devoted fan base. These include Dig Lazarus Dig!!! in 2008, Push The Sky Away in 2013, Skeleton Tree in 2016, and Ghosteen in 2019. Cave and company also have released a B-sides and rarities collection, a couple of traditional live albums, and a completely solo Cave live album called Idiot Prayer in 2020. There also was a multi-album, career-spanning best of compilation titled Lovely Creatures – The Best of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds in 2017.

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6. “Into My Arms” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: An Artist A Week/A Song A Day – A History of Alternative Music

6. “Into My Arms” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds 

(From the album The Boatman’s Call)

1997

Nick Cave followed up the success of Murder Ballads and it’s surprisingly successful single “Where The Wild Roses Grow” by taking a detour into my more subtle territory. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ tenth release, The Boatman’s Call, pulls back from the grand drama and theatricality of his previous albums and instead presents a series of piano-based songs that explore themes of love, loss, faith, and doubt. These are all themes that Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have explored many times before but they sound fresh and new in Cave’s stripped back, almost minimalist arrangements. Indeed, The Boatman’s Call breathes a sense of new life into Cave’s music by recasting him as a somber crooner rather than as a gothic rocker. This change can be heard in the album’s lead single and opening track “Into My Arms” which is a darkly-hued, yet romantic piano ballad. “Into My Arms” is quiet, reflective, and finds hope in his love for another. Cave had written quiet, romantic songs before (such as “The Ship Song”) but those songs were rarely arranged and produced so sparely. Without the bluster, drama, and epic scale that so much of his work has, “Into My Arms” and the other songs on The Boatman’s Call have nothing to hide behind, leaving all the listener’s focus on Cave’s lyrics and the subtle melodic hooks. This is enough though as Cave is a master songwriter as well as a superb craftsman and The Boatman’s Call is one of his strongest and most interesting records.

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5. “Where The Wild Roses Grow” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: An Artist A Week/A Song A Day – A History of Alternative Music

5. “Where The Wild Roses Grow” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (featuring Kylie Minogue)

(From the album Murder Ballads)

1996

While recording the 1992 album Henry’s Dream Cave had written the murder ballad “O’Malley’s Bar”. Cave however felt that the song would have been out of place on both that album and the next one he recorded, Let Love In, and so it was left off both records. However, “O’Malley’s Bar” got Cave thinking more about the traditional genre of murder ballads, and so Cave decided to make that genre the centerpiece of his next album. That album, 1996’s aptly titled Murder Ballads, was a collection of both original and traditional murder ballads. The lead single for the album was a Cave original titled “Where The Wild Roses Grow” which was a duet between himself and Australian pop star Kylie Minogue. Cave wrote the song, which is about a young couple where the man murders the woman, with Minogue in mind and admitted to having a “quiet obsession” about her for years. The song has a dark, gothic beauty and Cave and Minogue’s voices are good matches for each other. “Where The Wild Roses Grow” easily became the highest charting single of Cave’s career when it hit #11 in the UK and Top 20 in several other international markets. The song is atypical for Cave’s work, while also being a logical extension of it. Still, when MTV nominated Cave and the video for “Where The Wild Roses Grow” for “best male artist” Cave asked that they withdraw the nomination as he was concerned it would encourage people to seek out the album and then be upset with it when “Where The Wild Roses Grows” was different from the rest of Murder Ballads. While on one hand Cave may have a point about “Where The Wild Roses Grow” being an outlier in his discography, on the other hand it also is a great entry point into the overall sound and aesthetic of his work (not to mention that people perhaps should not have been too shocked about the tone or content of an album titled Murder Ballads). With or without an MTV nomination though, the success of “Where The Wild Roses Grow” made Murder Ballads Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ most commercially successful album.

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4. “Red Right Hand” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: An Artist A Week/A Song A Day – A History of Alternative Music

4. “Red Right Hand” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

(From the album Let Love In)

1994

1990 saw Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds release The Good Son, a lighter and somewhat more hopeful album than the previous two had been. Inspired in part by Cave’s falling in love and with a successful stay in rehab The Good Son, while still obviously the work of Cave, showed another side to the artist and spun off another minor UK hit with the tender ballad “The Ship Song”. Two years later Cave released Henry’s Dream. Produced by David Briggs, Cave was unhappy with the way the album was produced and generally considered it a failed project. To help rectify this Live Seeds, a live album that included several songs from Henry’s Dream, was released a year later. Live Seeds was largely an attempt to release versions of these songs that Cave felt matched his original vision for them but it also included live versions of many of Cave’s classics. 1994 saw Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds release Let Love In an album that firmly established Cave as an artist that still mattered in the alternative rock driven 1990’s. Let Love In had two minor UK hits in “Do You Love Me?” and “Loverman”, but it would be the album’s third single (and at the time least successful single) “Red Right Hand” that would become the album’s best known song. “Red Right Hand” was a fan favorite from the start and was nearly always played at Cave’s live shows. The song however also has been covered by several artists, was used in the Scream film franchise, and later as the theme song for the British crime drama Peaky Blinders. All of these factors have made “Red Right Hand”, along with “The Mercy Seat”, one of the signature songs from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. 

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3. “The Mercy Seat” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: An Artist A Week/A Song A Day – A History of Alternative Music

3. “The Mercy Seat” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

(From the album Tender Prey)

1988

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds followed up 1985’s excellent The Firstborn Is Dead by honing their sound and releasing two albums in 1986. The first of which, Kicking Against The Pricks, is a cover album where Cave and company interpret songs previously performed by artists such as Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, Jimi Hendrix, and The Velvet Underground. Like most artists who work within the folk and roots rock idiom re-interpreting older songs had been part of Nick Cave’s music from the beginning, but Kicking Against The Pricks showed that he and The Bad Seeds could twist almost any song they chose into something that was their own. Then, later in the year an album of new originals, Your Funeral…My Trial, was released that featured Cave classics like “Stranger Than Kindness”, “The Carny” and the title track. After taking a little time off after releasing four albums in three years Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds returned with 1988’s Tender Prey which continued to find new wrinkles in the band’s now established sound. Tender Prey opens with “The Mercy Seat”, a song about a condemned man waiting for the electric chair and equating it with the throne of God. The song became a live staple for Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and has become one of Cave’s signature songs. Tender Prey became the most commercially successful album from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds to this point, largely on the back of “The Mercy Seat” which was released as a single and hit #86 in the UK and helped to bring new listeners into the fold. 

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2. “Tupelo” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: An Artist A Week/A Song A Day – A History of Alternative Music

2. “Tupelo” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

(From the album The Firstborn Is Dead)

1985

Nick Cave’s previous music, both with The Birthday Party and on his own, had always dealt with themes common in American blues music. Topics like sin, faith, prison, fear, death, and natural disasters had played a part in both the blues and Cave’s music, so it is not strange that on Cave’s second solo album The Firstborn Is Dead that he adopts the blues as a major influence. All across the album Cave and The Bad Seeds draw on the blues and then warp it into something that is distinctly their own. This can be heard in expert form on the album’s opening track “Tupelo”. “Tupelo” is epic in scale and sound and mythologizes the night Elvis Presley was born, juxtaposing his birth (and the death of his older stillborn twin brother Jesse) with Biblical imagery and blues tropes, transforming the birth of Elvis (and by extension the birth of rock and roll) into a pseudo-religious myth that suggests rock and roll is a force that may well lead to salvation or damnation. Cave’s vocal performance is that of a true believer or mad prophet, while The Bad Seeds lay down a percussive, dramatic performance that could be heaven-sent or hellbound. “Tupelo” sets the tone for the rest of The Firstborn Is Dead which explores these themes and sounds further on with tracks like “Train Long Suffering”, “Black Crow King”, and “Knockin’ On Joe”. The Firstborn Is Dead both firmly establishes the unique style Cave had first presented on From Her To Eternity and moves that vision in a new, powerful direction.

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1. “From Her To Eternity” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: An Artist A Week/A Song A Day – A History of Alternative Music

1. “From Her To Eternity” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

(From the album From Her To Eternity)

1984

Nick Cave had made a name for himself as the leader of the Australian post-punk band The Birthday Party with his intense performances and deep baritone voice. The Birthday Party built up a cult following in Australia and Europe but broke up in 1983. The dissolution of The Birthday Party allowed Cave to pursue a solo career. Before fully striking out on his solo career though Cave began the process of forming his backing band The Bad Seeds, a fluid group of musicians who would work with Cave on most of his albums over the years and that initially included members of The Birthday Party, Magazine, Einsturzende Neubaten, among others. With his skilled and sympathetic band in place Cave and The Bad Seeds (originally going by the name the Cavemen) began to tour to hone their sound before entering the studio to record Cave’s debut solo album. That debut album was released in 1984 and titled From Her To Eternity. From Her To Eternity placed the focus of the songs on Cave’s powerful vocals and lyrics and then merged his charismatic performance art with experimental music that draws on post-punk, American roots music, goth rock, folk, art rock, and other diverse genres until it is all made into something new and unique. The centerpiece of the album is the title track “From Her To Eternity”. With lyrics co-written by Cave with Anita Lane, his girlfriend at the time and an occasional musical collaborator, “From Her To Eternity” transforms Cave into a madman obsessed with the woman who lives upstairs and shows his descent into lust-obsessed madness. Behind him The Bad Seeds play music driven by a percussive piano and industrial noises and creates an atmosphere so sharp with tension it feels like the edge of a knife. “From Her To Eternity” shows Cave’s unique sound is there from the beginning of his long and fruitful career. Cave would expand and adapt this sound but the core idea of the music he would make is present. “From Her To Eternity” is dark, difficult, scary, and fascinating. 

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7. “Hotel Last Resort” – Violent Femmes: An Artist A Week/A Song A Day – A History of Alternative Music

7. “Hotel Last Resort” – Violent Femmes

(From the album Hotel Last Resort)

2019

The years following the release of New Times were more difficult for Violent Femmes. The band quickly returned to the studio and recorded Rock!!!!! but the album was initially only released in Australia and wouldn’t get an American release the year 2000, a full five years after its initial release. 1999 saw Violent Femmes release an acoustic live album of their songs titled Viva Wisconsin. The band followed it up a year later with Freak Magnet, their first studio album released in America since New Times six years earlier (Rock!!!!! also finally was given an American release this year as well). 2001 saw the run of releases continue with the release of a rarities compilation called Something’s Wrong. The band continued to tour during this time and 2005 saw the release of another hits compilation titled Permanent Record: The Very Best of Violent Femmes. Growing tension within the band came to a head in 2007 when bassist Brian Ritchie sued main songwriter Gordon Gano over his liscening of the song “Blister In The Sun” to be used in an ad for fast food chain Wendy’s. Ultimately, the lawsuit led to the band breaking up in 2009. Violent Femmes reunited in 2013 however to play the Coachella Music and Arts Festival. This was a reunion of the original lineup of the band that included not only Gano and Ritchie but also original drummer Victor DeLorenzo. Ultimately, Violent Femmes would play several other festival shows but soon parted ways with DeLorenzo again and hired former Dresden Dolls drummer Brian Viglione. 2016 saw Viglione exit the band but not before he played on the Violent Femmes next album We Can Do Anything. The Violent Femmes then hired drummer John Sparrow and in 2019 Gano, Ritchie, and Sparrow went into the studio and recorded and then released Hotel Last Resort. Hotel Last Resort received the strongest critical praise for a Violent Femmes albums in years and the title track was a strong and melodic song that was reminiscent of Violent Femmes best work without being derivative. Due to the song’s title and dark undercurrents of paranoia it is also hard to not think of “Hotel Last Resort” as parallel universe alt rock version of the Eagles’ classic. In short, “Hotel Last Resort” and its solid accompanying album both indicate that Violent Femmes still can do good work almost forty years into their career.

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6. “Breakin’ Up” – Violent Femmes: An Artist A Week/A Song A Day – A History of Alternative Music

6. “Breakin’ Up” – Violent Femmes

(From the album New Times)

1994

Violent Femmes fifth album Why Do Birds Sing? was both a return to the sound of the classic debut and the end of an era. Following the release of the record and the tour supporting it original drummer Victor DeLorenzo decided to leave the band to pursue an acting career. To commemorate this first era of the band Violent Femmes released the compilation album Add It Up (1981-1993). To replace DeLorenzo Violent Femmes brought in former BoDeans drummer Guy Hoffmann and in 1994 this new lineup of the band release their sixth album, appropriately titled New Times. Having proven with Why Do Birds Sing? that the band could still create a successful album with their classic sound they used New Times as a chance to expand the sound of the band in new directions. Indeed, while echoes of Violent Femmes classic sound are still present, New Times finds the band making their most experimental album to date, with songs embracing a wide array of musical genres. These new directions, some of which are far removed from the band’s classic folk/punk sound, can be heard on songs like “Machine”, “Mirror Mirror (I See A Damsel)”, “This Island Life”, and “Jesus Of Rio”. Many of these stylistic detours are buried deep on the album though and most of the songs on the first half of New Times are more extensions of the traditional Violent Femmes sound than radical reworkings. Songs like “Don’t Start Me On The Liquor”, “I’m Nothing”, “4 Seasons” and “Key Of 2” wouldn’t have been completely out of place on The Blind Leading The Naked or 3. This expansion of their traditional sound can also be heard on the album’s lead single “Breakin’ Up”. “Breakin’ Up”, which cleverly twists the sentiment of Neil Sedaka’s 1960’s pop classic “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”, is a typical Violent Femmes folk/punk song at heart that has been toughened up and made more rock-oriented in production. “Breakin’ Up” has a manic, obsessive tone to it, largely provided by Gordon Gano’s creepy vocal performance, the belies the narrator’s words that “breaking up is easy to do”. Gano’s performance is supported by superb playing from the new Ritchie and Hoffmann rhythm section which really proves its merits when the songs shifts from a dark folk song to a propulsive rocker over the bridge. “Breakin’ Up” became a deserved minor alt rock hit for Violent Femmes even though the New Times album was a commercial disappointment for the band. 

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