Guest Post - Nick Cave's closers of the 1990s
Bad Seeds Act 2: Growth - Part 1
I’m delighted to bring you another of Challenge 69‘s guest posts on Nick Cave’s closing tracks - today, we have the first part of the 1990s; we will conclude that decade tomorrow and go just a little further than that.
With the admin done, I’ll pass the mic….
Welcome back to the second Act of my ‘Run Out Grooves’ retrospective, looking back over all eighteen studio albums released (to date) by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.
Sitting at the heart of this month’s selections is The Boatman’s Call, the album through which I connected with Cave (courtesy of ‘Into My Arms’) before loyally journeying with him and the band (both backwards and forwards) ever since.
While Act 1 was unarguably a bit of a slog at times, as The Bad Seeds stumbled to find their post-Birthday Party feet, reassessing this next set of albums for Act 2 became a far more pleasurable exercise. I have tried to maintain perspective here, and not come over as too much of a ‘fan-boy’, but, objectivity aside, there is little point denying I regard these six records as one of the strongest runs of albums to be found anywhere in my ‘maverick music’ collection.
And if you like what you read, please give my (similarly themed) novel a try. It is serialised (for free) on Substack, with every chapter released so far available via the attached ‘catch-up’ link.
Challenge 69 - The Story So Far
Enough of the preamble though, coming ‘straight to you’, from 1992, let’s start with …
Henry’s Dream (1992) - ‘Jack the Ripper’
“I awake with a hatchet hanging over my head.”
A quiet seismic change (if such a thing is possible!) had shaken the band again prior to the recording of this album, with the Bad Seeds’ Aussie ranks bolstered by the addition of Martyn Casey (of The Triffids fame) on bass and Conway Savage on keyboards. Both musicians would stick around long-term to become trusted lieutenants.
While all of the songs on Henry’s Dream come solely credited to Nick Cave, he apparently turned up to the New York demos with a notebook brim full of lyrics, yet barely a note of music written, a situation he blamed on his word processor in Sao Paolo being on the opposite side of the room from the piano! When the band questioned, “is that it?” Nick simply replied, “yeah, you do whatever you want.”
This trust in the Bad Seeds was repaid, though, their newfound consistency from The Good Son carrying over into these recording sessions (in New York and California), turning Henry’s Dream, once more, into a set without a duff track.
The band’s habitual intolerance with their producers raised its head again, however; unhappy with David Briggs’ ‘live-in-the-studio’ approach, Cave and Mick Harvey ended up totally re-mixing the album.
‘Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry’ (often performed live) centres on its rollicking choruses, but for a song Cave proclaimed a ‘lullaby’, regularly sung to his new-born son, it also has verses containing some spectacularly inappropriate lyrics
‘I had a Dream, Joe’ cleverly turns things on their head, with raucous verses (this time) anchored by melodic choruses
‘Straight to You’, a further live staple, becomes the latest in a steadily growing series of great Nick Cave love songs
‘Brother, My Cup is Empty’ provides further evidence of Cave’s growing ability to control his ‘ranting’ voice, even daring to throw in a few Elvis inflections
‘Christina the Astonishing’ weaves a fascinating story of a 12th-century Christian saint around an appropriate backing of swirling church organ
‘When I First Came to Town’ is built on a traditional tune, but cleverly transforms this into a Cash-like drifter song
‘John Finns’ Wife’ could be an early try-out for Murder Ballads, with a tale of the ‘good, bad, and ugly’, and some classic Cave rhyming of, “confetti,” with, “machete.”
While ‘Loom of the Land’, revisiting a ballad style, is a song that, later on, wouldn’t have sounded out of place on ‘No More Shall We Part’.
All of which, over an eclectic, entertaining thirty-eight minutes, delivers us into the arms of the album’s ‘serial killer’ invoking Run Out Grooves song, ‘Jack the Ripper’.
This should (in design) have made a perfect closer to a well-balanced album, but the production difficulties referenced earlier get in the way, and while I regard ‘Jack the Ripper’ as one of Cave’s most underappreciated songs, this album version never properly delivers on the planned sense of menace.
Unsurprisingly, this is one of the tracks Cave chose to, “do justice,” to later, on Live Seeds, where the performance builds with an intensity lacking on Henry’s Dream.
The live performance video attached below (intercut with a lot of knife imagery) shows ‘Jack the Ripper’ off to better effect …
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - 'Jack the Ripper'
… but in my view, out-dooming the doom-master, the best ever rendition of this track (and one of my favourite covers) actually comes from the Canadian band Japandroids, with an interpretation that fully delivers on the song’s malevolent intent.
Despite Cave having turned up ‘tuneless’ in America, the confident (if uncredited) Bad Seeds helped turn his best-realised set of lyrics to date into a fine album, outweighing any (perceived) production difficulties.
Henry’s Dream was positively received; both critically, with Entertainment Weekly claiming the record, "may finally demonstrate what the fuss is all about,", and by the record buying public, reaching #29 in the UK Charts, the band’s best showing yet.
As the ‘Growth’ sub-title of Act 2 indicates though, there was better to follow.
Let Love In (1994) - ‘Do You Love Me? (Part 2)’
“The coins in my pocket go jingle-jangle.”
Let Love In is significantly more schizophrenic than either of its two predecessors. Recorded in London and Melbourne, and written following the end of Cave’s relationship with Viviane Carneiro, the album’s ten songs are themed around a deep, dangerous, and doomed love; a lyrical mindset Nick would revisit again (to more consistent effect) after another break-up, on The Boatman’s Call.
I won’t spend long on ‘Do You Love Me?’ which, for reprise reasons, will need to be revisited in detail later, but suffice to say it gets Let Love In off to a storming start.
There are other tracks it is best to pass by with little comment; ‘Loverman’, ‘Thirsty Dog’, ‘Lay Me Low’, and particularly ‘Jangling Jack’, all seem to hark back to the wilful anti-commerciality that plagued The Birthday Party and early Bad Seeds. Musically these songs are a mess, and even their sentiments over ‘failing romance’ (covered masterfully elsewhere on the album) fall the wrong side of spitefulness and self-pity. ‘Ain’t Gonna Rain Anymore’, whilst pretty, is also fairly inconsequential.
Which all sounds like I’m about to trash Let Love In. Yet, on the contrary, taken as a whole it is a great album; one to prove the truism that a brilliant record can survive a few weak links, along the way, provided it throws in enough ‘banging’ tracks to compensate. And ‘Let Love In’ contains four truly great Bad Seeds songs, one of which (in the immortal words of The White Stripes), “bears repeating.”
‘Nobody’s Baby Now’ is a beautifully expressed, expressively ‘crooned’, tale of a love lost, who, Nick concedes, still, “lives in my blood and skin.”
‘I Let Love In’ explores a similar theme, but frames it differently by adding a new country twang, showcasing The Bad Seeds growing versatility, but above all else,
Whilst strong arguments could be made for any of ‘The Mercy Seat’, ‘Into My Arms’, or ‘Red Right Hand’ being Nick Cave’s best-known song, the latter probably swings it (latterly!) given its huge theme-tune exposure; firstly for the Scream movie franchise and then in Peaky Blinders. This is a stunning piece of songwriting (perhaps the best ever lyrical evocation of satanic influence), which also comes complete with one of my favourite, syllabically magnificent, lines, “you’re one microscopic cog, in his catastrophic plan.”
Nick Cave himself is sufficiently proud of ‘Red Right Hand’ to have chosen it to title his treasured fan communication forum:
Which just leaves us to explore ‘Do You Love Me?’ Twice over.
It is not uncommon for an album to end with a ‘reprise’ of an earlier track, but what I suspect does make ‘Do You Love Me? (Part 2)’ an unusual Run Out Grooves entry (though I’m sure Mitchell will correct me if I’m wrong) is that the song’s second incarnation has a running time longer than its initial outing.
‘Part 2’ is essentially a cover version, within the same album, of its opening track.
It shares the same tune as the original but with the tempo slowed, the instrumentation pared back, and a whole new set of verses added; while thematically consistent (retaining the ‘jingle-jangle’) it becomes way more inscrutable (in an early nod towards Cave’s more recent lyricism).
But the masterstroke, turning the reprise into a wholly different listening experience, is the way the chorus’s repeated enquiry of, “do you love me?” is kept intact, while the pay-off line from the opener, “like I love you,” has now gone missing. The absence of this riposte, which the brain still expects to hear, somehow turns the song’s already palpable sense of loss into something even more heartbreaking. Genius!
And the paying public seemed to agree. Let Love In reached #12 in the UK Albums Chart, becoming the first Bad Seeds Album to earn a silver disc.
This bandwagon may have been slow to start rolling, but was surely now unstoppable. Unless Nick were to do something weird next, like a whole album of murder ballads!
Murder Ballads (1996) - ‘Death is not the End’
“When the cities are on fire, with the burning flesh of men.”
Let’s imagine a discussion which may have taken place in Mute HQ, early in 1995:
Daniel Miller: “You must be pleased with Let Love In Nick. Number ten on NME’s ‘Album of the Year’ list.”
Nick Cave: “I don’t care what those ****s think, Oasis & Blur are one and two for f***s sake. But yeah, we were happy with the record.”
Daniel (with fingers crossed!): “So what are you planning for a follow-up?”
Nick: “Well, don’t panic, but I’ve got an idea. I’ve always loved all those old ‘murder ballads’, how about bringing the tradition up to date with a whole album of Bad Seed versions?
Daniel (hesitant, with panic in his eyes): “OK, but that might be a bit of a minority taste?”
Nick: “Well it could be, but what if I have a plan! How about I call in a favour?”
Which is exactly what Cave (using some musical Antipodean antecedent of LinkedIn) went ahead and did. A year or so later, he was caught pummelling Kylie Minogue to death with a rock on ‘Top of the Pops’ and MTV, and has never looked back since!
The tradition of murder ballads had been around since medieval times, predominantly in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Scandinavia, before emigrating into the folk music of the ‘new world’. Given the gothic imagery and macabre preoccupations of much of Cave’s lyricism it was unsurprising this form of song appealed (remember he covered ‘The Long Black Veil’ on Kicking Against the Pricks).
But the genesis of Murder Ballads came from two songs written and recorded for the Let Love In sessions (‘O’Malley’s Bar’ and ‘Song of Joy’) before ultimately being discarded as not making ‘a good fit’ for the album.
Nick and the band liked both songs, but accepted they were always likely (even on a Bad Seeds album!) to stick out like sore thumbs, unless they wrote another set of ‘murderous’ songs to sit (un)comfortably alongside them. This was treated as a running joke at first, as Conway Savage recalls, always, “loosely referred to in the band as a comedy record.” But the idea somehow stuck and Murder Ballads became a reality.
There are, by my calculations, 66 murders committed (65 people and 1 dog!) over the course of the album’s ten tracks (placing Cave firmly in serial killer territory!), but despite this grisly count (or perhaps because of it) there isn’t a bad song amongst them, even if they are all, inherently, ‘bad to the core’!
While I don’t intend running through the full crime sheet, homicide by homicide, I can’t resist highlighting a few personal favourites:
‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’ may be the song everyone knows but it’s undeniably a beautiful (tragic) duet. The striking ‘evil versus innocence’ counterpoint of their vocals made the collaboration a seminal moment for both parties. For Nick (“who’s that lanky guy with the weird hair with Kylie?”) it brought a commercial recognition he would never have achieved alone, while for ‘pop princess’ Kylie (“I didn’t know she could do that!”) it added an artistic credibility she never subsequently lost.
‘Stagger Lee’ is a polar opposite (even on an album of heinous crime), replacing ‘WtWRG’s sweetness with a sense of pure evil. In our revisionist times, much of the language might now be questionable, but once you have seen Cave perform ‘Stagger Lee’ live, where it still holds sway as a regular, blistering set closer, you can appreciate how much the song’s ‘bullets in the head’ are ‘tongue in cheek’.
‘The Curse of Millhaven’ is my favourite ‘MBs’ song, with a record death count (of 23) and a carnivalesque swagger, greatly enhanced by some deranged accordion and violin from guest musician Warren Ellis (who we may hear from again later!)
‘Henry Lee’ may be the poor relation of the album’s two duets, with Polly Harvey bringing a ‘credibility’ Kylie lacked but little of her fame, but it is the better song. Things have switched around, with the woman now our murderer, but what stands out most (given Cave & Harvey’s nascent relationship) is an astounding, unmistakable sexual frisson in the song’s promotional video.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - 'Henry Lee' ft. P.J Harvey
Which all brings us, not before time, to the album’s final track ‘Death Is Not the End’.
This is the only song on the record where no crime is committed (unless you count the band ‘murdering’ the Dylan original!), and while by no means the record’s strongest track it does make a nigh on perfect choice for a closer.
‘Death Is Not the End’ is sung in turn, verse by verse, ensemble style (with surely an ironic nod towards Band Aid!) by Cave, PJ Harvey, Shane MacGowan, Kylie, Thomas Wylder, Anita Lane, and Blixa Bargeld, and its repeated refrain to, “remember, death is not the end,” cleverly places all the preceding carnage in appropriate context.
While, on one hand, Cave may label the record, “a monstrous thing,” this final track simultaneously allows a contrary view come to the fore. To quote Martyn Casey, Murder Ballads is ultimately (as The Bad Seeds intended), “a party record!”
And Daniel Miller needn’t have been worried. With Kylie’s stardust (and a hit single) to help along the way this became the first Bad Seeds album to make the UK ‘top ten’, even making #1 in Norway and Sweden (where a little death clearly goes a long way!)
Having got away with murder, where would the band go next?
Tune in tomorrow for part 2 of Nick Cave’s 90s (and early 2000s) closers.
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