Bad Seeds, Nick Cave - Best of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Our Price: $34.77
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $4.19 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more CD details

CD Details

Music reviews of Best of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Music Review: the chariots of angels collide when Nick comes around
Rating: 5 Stars

Nick Cave is an acquired taste, often it's too much for me to handle, but it's darn good...many of Nick's songs seem to be possessed with a sickness, very gothic tunes for murders, cynical strangers, lonely souls, and shadowy devils seem to be his standard...

That said, on with the basic layout...

You get Nick's most known songs...the spooky, haunting horrofests that travel into the most morbid regions of your psyche..."Red Right Hand" is by far the most accessible of these as well as the most accessible song period out of his whole catalog, and no wonder...it is a brilliant mixture of 60s-style organs and arrangements and his smoky croon, telling the methods and plans of Mr. Lucipher himself...it seems to act as an omen more than a celebration. "Tupelo" is pure insanity reflecting apocalyptic imagery while staying away from Biblical judgement seeming to commend the fact that evil will prevail with his saying that the bird will carry "the burden of Tupelo", the music genuinely unique, a feirce rumble and growling demon vocal that only they could pull off. "Stranger Than Kindness" is a wandering trudge thru the remnants of a world that has ceased to exist, reflected in both the sparce country-style rock and the ghostly lyrics. "The Carny" is another unforgettable classic, it [pulls] you into its twisted Flannery O' Connor-esque cavalcade of cicrcus freaks with its dueling vocals and enchroaching 'carnival passing thru the nine gates of hell' music, it gives you a sense of supernatural karma and peril as the dead carny comes back from the grave to get revenge on the ones that abandoned him. While not the scariest, "From Her To Eternity" is certainly frightening, the cathartic guitars and deranged singing and pounding piano clashing together in spasmodic energy to portray this man's devotion to a girl he is obsessed with...

...the freight doesn't end there. It continues with no less effective but still notable titles such as "Do You Love Me?" (wild story of a doomed relationship caught behind howling choruses and spiralling road music), "The Mercy Seat" (frantic, intense, wonderful epic about falsely-accused man in jail getting further and further towards the electric chair, the slamming march-style music complets this effect), and "Deanna" (a Beach Boys song on acid, as some other reviewer noted elsewhere, unlike other CAve songs this celebrates the disturbing violence rather than convict or simply observe it)...

THe other half of CAve's collection is devoted to morose love ballads drenched in sadness, despair, and bliss...there's my favorite, "Strait To You", a Dylanesque signal from the approaching apocalypse that promises his girlfriend that he'll be there even when the chariots of angels are colliding; "Nobody's Baby Now", one of his most down-to-Earth creations that serves as a relatively simple tribute to a deceased lover; "Where The Wild Roses Grow", a somnambulant rose-coloured sway that is more of a sign that "all beauty must die" as the protagonist murders his love; "Into My ARms", another simpler ballad that gives its credit to singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen; the mellow dirge "Henry Lee" with Polly Jean Harvey on vocals, telling the unsettling tale of betrayal and murder like the Roses song; "The Ship Song" is one of the more accessible, another Cohenesque track that reflects a complete apathy and bliss with the state of things; "Are You THe One I'm Waiting For?", with its loungy act and tender vox, is also great. All the aforementioned songs could've been released collectively as an album of love songs, which I think was already done with THE BOATMAN's CALL. The only other mellow song which doesn't fit this colletion of romance is "The Weeping Song" which trades dialogue from a father and his son, trying to find out the nature of the sorrow that has plagued Cave's mind for so many years.

All the pretentious reviewing aside, this is mixed bag of all the many chaotic emotions of Nick Cave & tHe Bad Seeds, finding their own place in your ears and mind before the 70-some minutes is complete. An unstable and haunting journey, yes, but one worth traveling on. So sit back, breath in the smell of coffins from the booklet, and watch the world's bridges be burned.

Alternative Rock CDs

• Music > Styles
• World Music
• Pop
• Rock