Sunday, May 22, 2005

True Weeping is Yet to Come

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Good Son

Many months ago I bought the new Nick Cave double album, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, and at the time I said that while I thought it was a good album, I kept putting it aside to listen to Slipknot again. For the record, I found myself listening to Nick Cave more and more as time went on, and am still getting more out of it every time I do, while Slipknot got old quite fast, and now languishes near the bottom of the CD pile.

So I went out to buy myself some more Nick Cave. Now normally when I try and get into an established artist who has a few albums out, I make a mental list of all their singles that I'm familiar with and buy the album which has them all on it. Unfortunately all the Nick Cave songs I like are on different albums, so I just picked this one which had my favorite, 'The Weeping Song'.

Like the double album, it's all moody, piano driven ballads, only a lot more downbeat this time. Cave's lyrics are always great, and while the words to 'The Weeping Song' are a particular highlight, the rest of the album doesn't live up to it until the last track, 'Lucy'. His singing is not nearly as accomplished as it is in his later stuff, but I think that works for him in a 'tortured artist venting his soul' kind of way. Plus Blixa Bargeld from Einsturzende Neubauten does some nice backup vocals. As for the music, it's good but lacks the intensity of the double album, and there's a kind of scattered samey quality to it that turns me off a bit. Of course, this could turn out to be another grower...

2 comments:

Joel said...

Ever try some Leonard Cohen? People may shoot me for saying such - but Cohen and Cave are kinda similar.

Jon said...

If you follow the link that has mysteriously appeared in the post since you made your comment, you'll see that I mentioned Cohen in my Lyre of Orpheus post.

I've never really got into Cohen, mainly because my Mum liked him when I was a kid, and anything your Mum likes can never be cool.