UNDERRATED NICK CAVE SONGS

These songs are pretty well known to Nick Cave fans, so calling them underrated is not entirely accurate. They are in no particular order and are not comprehensive by any means. For some reason I have included songs from Grinderman but not the Birthday Party. I dont know why.....maybe that is a different list. Enjoy, and please feel free to post your own picks.


DARKER WITH THE DAY

The picture painted here is a vast kaleidoscope view of the world. It is the story of an observer who's mind is jumping from one subject to the next and the result is that the listener is taken in multiple directions as well. It is sort of a fragile song that seems in danger of sinking from the ambitious but fragmented lyrics. Instead it somehow floats along and works perfectly.


SUGAR SUGAR SUGAR

While "The Mercy Seat" was a clear highlight of the Tender Prey album, another standout is the menacing "Sugar, Sugar, Sugar". Cave's vocals are guttural and malicious while Blixa Bargeld's guitar borders on discordant and threatens to derail the whole affair. Instead it just adds to the tightly wound mood and horror movie suspense as the music chugs along with foreboding intensity.

WHAT I KNOW (Grinderman)

Part of the purpose of Grinderman was that they were louder and messier than Bad Seeds of recent years. However, the quieter songs are some of the best moments of the band. "What I Know" has a bare bones repetitive quality that reminds me a little of a Suicide song like "Che". The lyrics are some of Cave's most candid since the The Boatman's call and it is perhaps the first glimpse of what the next Bad Seeds album (Push The Sky Away) would sound like.

JOHN FINNS WIFE

Another of Caves most interesting narratives...... John Finns Wife is dramatic and engrossing. Apparently, the Henry's Dream album was sort of poisoned for the band by a bad experience with a producer. However, the quality of the songs and dynamics of the band remain in tact and come across very well.

'TIL THE END OF THE WORLD

By offering only part of the story in this fragmented narrative, it ignites the imagination and leaves huge gaps for interpretation and possibility. A strange and eerily beautiful song originally included in the Wim Wenders film of the same name (which offers no further clues to the mysterious lyrics).  

MAN IN THE MOON (Grinderman)

A break from traditional song structure with little lyrical repetition. At barely over 2 minutes, this one passes by pretty quickly. It could have been expanded upon, but part of the effectiveness is that it is pared down to its essential elements. Gets better with each listen.

KNOCKIN' ON JOE

The Firstborn is Dead is often considered to be the Bad Seeds "Blues" album......sometimes to the point of criticism. While there is an obvious reference to Blues music in both style and subject matter, the album maintains a strong identity of its own. This is the Bad Seeds record that I most enjoy listening to from start to finish. It is easy to become immersed in the world portrayed in Knockin' on Joe. It slinks along at varied tempos and is completely engrossing.

LIGHTING BOLTS

While Warren Ellis' looping plays a strong role on the recent album, Push the Sky Away, it is never more apparent than the addictive droning clatter of the B-side, Lightning Bolts.  Caves spoken Lyrics are symbolic and imaginative, referencing subject matters that range from mythology to parenting. The closing line "We are mostly lost" gives a sense of being marooned in modern society. This is an unusual offering for the Bad Seeds and hopefully a hint at their future direction.

WEST COUNTRY GIRL

Supposedly about PJ harvey, West Country Girl is carried by a thumping heartbeat bass and minimal drums while the guitar and violin sail around in unison. Perhaps the most rhythmic offering on the Boatman's Call album, and also the shortest. While it is a well known track, there are at least three others on the album that are usually mentioned first. Lyrically, it is a descriptive and visual love song that is both human and otherworldly.

NEW MORNING

There is something about the lyrics on The Tender Prey's closing track that are universal and timeless, but the delivery is almost sarcastic and dismissive. It is a bit of a misfit on the album and among Nick Caves work as a whole. At first it seems to be at odds with itself even, but in time it starts to make sense. Revisit this song with the lyrics on hand because they are incredible. I hope that The Bad Seeds tour New Morning again at some point, it would be interesting to hear it re-envisioned with the bands current sound.

O'MALLY'S BAR

In the course of 14 and a half minutes we pay witness to a small town killing spree that could be easily turned into a full length movie. Often this song is mentioned for its dark humor and high body count, but it is perhaps overlooked in being one of Cave's most complex character studies and complete narratives. While there is humor at work here, the protagonist's sense of justification and egotistic self reflection is somehow believable and scary. Because of the structure, subject matter and long run time O'Mally's Bar may not be a song that you listen to on a daily basis, but it is still one of Cave's best.




 

like

There are so many forms of artistic expression.  Some are violent and storming, some planned and executed with craftsmanship, some drawn, sculpted, painted, some raised on a pedestal, some left to collect dust. These are the embodiments of idea, of self, of what has been, of what could be. The shapes that they take are a window into ourselves and the world around us. The shapes that they take have a purpose. Somehow though, the holes in our heads in which we perceive the world are smaller than these shapes. Light shines into our minds in the shape of a cookie cutter triangle and all that we see comes squeezing through it. When it plops down in our minds, the triangle forms a ridge. On one side are things that we like. On the other side are things that we do not like. When a decision is made we slide down one side or the other into the gutter of our choosing. And in either gutter, potential shrivels up at an equal rate.

There is the old question of whether art imitates life or life imitates art. I do not think that either one is true. I think that they bleed into each other, and as the axis of modern life revolves closer and closer to a system of "likes", our little windows become narrower in both worlds.    

ripples in the wake

You can set things up however you like. You can build them or buy them or paint them or carve them. You can set that block down and look at it from all sides. This decision of intent and deliberation is yours. These bricks. This planter. This effigy. The decision is yours. But when you set something down or jot something down or sketch something out it goes splashing though the ground and disappears. What you thought was yours is gone and how can you predict the ripples that are left in its wake?

lazy day

Living life to the fullest while reclining. Neglecting all sorts of responsibilities. Artistic projects go sailing unrealized through my grasp. I tend to dance around those little helium balloons and tug at their strings. a constant struggle to bring them within reach until they start to sag and sink and become manageable. I dip them into clay slip and fire them to a thin and brittle shell. A skeleton of what they were and a shadow of what they could be.  Finished art seems a shell. I like it with strings unknotted and sails whipping out of control. Today goes blazing by and I lay tired and uninclined to do anything. Today goes blazing by and I go blazing through it on my couch chariot. My psychic bobsled.  

On writing new songs......

My songs are pigeons and I am the stunted bell ringer in the tower. I try to nurture them and help them grow. I surround them with electronic devices so that I do not have to remember to feed them. I have programed my machines to feed them while I drink tea and watch you-tube tutorials. I snatch them up and and move though my days. Some of them are so light and frail that the wind catches them and they sail from my grasp, choking out a few breaths and then disappearing. Some of them are strong and they treat me like the clueless parent that I am. I don't know what to do except wake up each morning and hammer obnoxiously through the piano scales.  I don't know what to do except climb to the top of my tower and start ringing the bell.

fly if you are brave

Cool air and ground just dry enough to skateboard to work.  It is mostly down hill.  A skateboard does not quite belong on the sidewalk or the street so I move from one to the other, picking the smoothest route, trying to avoid cars and pedestrians.  What a good feeling it is to be in motion.  To decide your course.  To be alert.  I pause at a cross street and to allow a row of toddlers to cross the street.  They are accompanied by an adult at either end and they all look at me as they pass.  I smile at them and one of them waves.  I felt like telling them that they can roll too if they want to.  Even fly if they are brave.

chaos and idea

Sleep hasn't been coming easy.  I close my eyes and the floodgates open.  Phrases that do not seem to be my own relentlessly voice themselves without permission.  Images of unearthly creatures clearly take shape and then flash by:  Predatory multi-armed stick men wait and leap, a giant lizard creature with flaming nostrils slinks around devouring a coliseum full of people.  I open eyes.  Shift around. Sip some water.  Close my eyes and the line that forms between my lids is like a tightrope above an infinite chasm.

Yesterday I read about the Big Bang theory.  I read about the universe beginning from something called a singularity which was immeasurably small, dense, and hot.  One theory is that a singularity exists at the center of a black hole compressed by gravity into density that we could not even comprehend.  But this is a problem because it is also believed that once there was nothing at all.  No universe.  No singularity.  Just nothing.  Think of that.  I close my eyes and try to imagine nothing but my mind is in a perpetual state of explosion.  Fearful shapes are stepping out of the void.  How far down does that go?  If I keep my eyes closed could I be brave enough to watch?  I close my eyes and my physical being is a very thin blanket shielding me from existence.  Perhaps that is all there is.  A blanket and existence.  Or a blanket and nothing.  Or just nothing.

How far down does that go?  I don't know but I want to find out.  Maybe the roughest waters are on the surface and I am not yet skilled enough to move past them.  Maybe I have to swim through them.  So far it seems that art is the only thing that allows any sort of access into my own mind.  My own singularity.  My own void.  It gives me a certain degree of confidence and strength to close my eyes and proceed.  Or open them and proceed.  To navigate through the chaos that is the birth of an idea.  I close my eyes.  I open my eyes.  I close my eyes.  I open my eyes.