NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS: "Murder Ballads"

Original released on CD Mute CDSTUMM138

(UK 1996, February 5)

In some ways, "Murder Ballads" is the record Nick Cave was waiting to make his entire career. Death and violence have always haunted his music, even when he wasn't explicitly singing about the subject. On "Murder Ballads", he sings about nothing but death in the most gruesome, shocking fashion. Divided between originals and covers, the record is awash in both morbid humor and sobering horror, as the Bad Seeds provide an appropriate backdrop for the carnage, alternating between blues, country, and lounge-jazz. Opening the affair is "Song for Joy," a tale from a father who has witnessed his family's death at the hands of serial killer. It is the most disturbing number on the record, lacking any of the gallows humor that balances out the other songs. Cave's duets with Kylie Minogue ("Where the Wild Roses Grow") and PJ Harvey ("Henry Lee") are intriguing, but the true tours de force of the album are "Stagger Lee" and "O'Malley's Bar." Working from an obscure, vulgar variation on "Stagger Lee," Cave increases the sordidness of the song, making Stagger an utterly irredeemable character. The original "O'Malley's Bar" is even stronger, as he spins a bizarrely funny epic of one man's slaughter of an entire bar. During "O'Malley's Bar," Cave and the Bad Seeds are at the height of their powers and the performances rank among the best they have ever recorded. (Stephen Erlewine in AllMusic)

NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS: "The Boatman's Call" (+ Bonus Tracks)

Original released on CD Mute CDSTUMM142

(UK 1997, March 4)

"Murder Ballads" brought Nick Cave's morbidity to near-parodic levels, which makes the disarmingly frank and introspective songs of "The Boatman's Call" all the more startling. A song cycle equally inspired by Cave's failed romantic affairs and religious doubts, "The Boatman's Call" captures him at his most honest and despairing - while he retains a fascination for gothic, Biblical imagery, it has little of the grand theatricality and self-conscious poetics that made his albums emotionally distant in the past. This time, there's no posturing, either from Cave or the Bad Seeds. The music is direct, yet it has many textures, from blues to jazz, which offer a revealing and sympathetic bed for Cave's best, most affecting songs. "The Boatman's Call" is one of his finest albums and arguably the masterpiece he has been promising throughout his career. (Stephen Erlewine in AllMusic)