Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds

Murder Ballads

Terrifying Beauty Taken To Its Obvious Conclusion

Review Score:

(10/10)
Similar to almost any other Australian music-lover, I'd heard "Where The Wild Roses Grow" countless times before I decided to buy this album. Indeed, my actual purchase may have been as a sort of "NOW, will you stop playing this song?" reaction. Regardless, this CD is simultaneously the most terrifying one I have ever listened to from start to finish and also the most amazing idea I have ever seen committed to CD.

The title says it all, Cave and his Bad Seeds have taken the age-old murder ballad and had their wicked way with it and would now like you to hear the fruits of their labour. Not all of these songs are old murder ballads, and those which are tend to be present with slight alterations or in lesser-known forms, but they all would not sound out of place at any time in history. The reason being that they deal with topics such as cold-blooded murder, obsessive passion and crazed hatred which are not alien to any culture.

The opener, "Song Of Joy", is full of typical Cave irony. The title refers to the wife of the singer - killed in a particularly brutal fashion, as the song reveals. Of course, the idea of naming such an unrepentantly nasty song "Song Of Joy" is only what we have come to expect from this tortured genius. Cave's wit surfaces with such moments as the description of the wife becoming sad and "Joy in name only". As the song goes on, Cave weaves in a reference to Milton's "Paradise Lost" (interestingly enough, the same section which gave him the title of an earlier song) and gives some very tantalising clues to the killer's identity. A word of warning, listening to this song at night as not overly recommended, the atmospheric nature of gloom is more than all-pervading.

"Stagger Lee" and "Henry Lee" are both old ballads, and routinely listed as some of the best murder ballads of all time. "Stagger Lee" is performed in a rarer version which makes the (anti-)hero significantly less repentant. For some reason, this actually makes Stag somewhat more appealing as a subject. "Henry Lee" is a duet with PJ Harvey, in which the traditional murder ballad roles are reversed. This time, it's the man - a terribly flaky character as portrayed by Cave - who gets done in by Harvey, again, the listener finds themselves cheering the killer.

"Lovely Creature" and "Wild Roses" both deal with crimes of passion. "Lovely Creature"s pace - significantly faster than the songs around it - makes it a standout, as does the lyric which does not explicitly state that murder occurred. Indeed, the lyric reveals a depth of passion which is somewhat odd considering that the indication is that the murderer and victim have only just met. The ethereal, wordless female vocals backing Cave add immeasurably to the effect - as Cave paints a picture of a killer who may not quite be on the right side of sanity. "Wild Roses" covers much of the same ground, and could almost serve as a dual-narrative version of "Lovely Creature" were it not for the time factor. Kylie Minogue's voice provides a sharp foil of innocence against which Cave's voice - in a masterful performance - relays its clear-minded insanity. The song is especially poignant considering the romance between the singers which existed at the time - the lyrics reveal considerable passion on both sides, but yet there is an air of inevitability about the death. One particularly arch touch is Minogue's revelation in her verse that Cave's parting words of "All beauty must die" became merely "a muttered word".

Then comes the section of the album where Cave loosens up - if such a description could ever be applied. "The Curse Of Millhaven" is hilarious in the most perverse sense of the word. Cave portrays a young woman in a small town where a whole series of gruesome deaths just keep happening, and over a very rapidly-paced instrumental, the listener is left gasping for breath as more and more sadistic scenarios are described. When all is revealed in a wonderful denouement, the listener will almost invariably think "Oh well, the dead ones had it coming to them", this is because of Cave's incredible talent of making the least sympathetic characters of his songs become the most engaging of anti-heros.

"The Kindness Of Strangers" and "Crow Jane" are rather peculiar in relation to the rest of the album. The former is a rather straightforward narrative which seems a bit unsatisfactory when it ends. Cave has inserted a moral about stranger danger and it is unclear exactly how he wants this to be taken. Nonetheless, the story itself is quite a clever idea and the muffled crying as the song fades out is a nice touch. "Crow Jane" is almost too poetic for its own good, as it takes a few listens to work out exactly what's going on. Granted Cave is a singer-songwriter, but on an album of murder ballads, it would be nice to be able to understand everything first go - guts and glory, so to speak.

"O'Malley's Bar" is the only misfire of the album. It appears to almost be a jam session at times, with Cave trotting out a bizarre lyric about a killer with a God-complex killing all the occupants of a bar. There's nothing wrong with that, but the length of the song (some 15 minutes) is rather tedious. There is some room for Blixa Bargeld to deliver his sound effects, which fans of Einsturzende Neubauten will recognise very quickly.

The album ends with all the guests, plus a few others, joining in a version of Bob Dylan's "Death Is Not The End". Here, the effect that Cave was trying to achieve by counterpointing the female vocals of Harvey and Minogue with his own dark voice is completely realised. The addition of some vocals with German accents provides a third contrast.

Overall, absolutely worthwile as a purchase. A tour-de-force of what Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds have been aiming at doing ever since their inception.

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