Music to die for, literally (The Best Of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Nick Cave)

Member Name: mo79

Product:	The Best Of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Nick Cave
Date:	01/11/00 (50 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Like dark, bitter and twisted? This is the album to get!

Disadvantages: Hey, there's none for me, if there is for you then...

If there was ever a need to write a national anthem for Halloween, Nick Cave and his band of unmerry Bad Seeds should definetly be blessed with that accolade.
Though I'm not a diehard Cave fan (especially having only purchased this album recently), this best of collection is definetly a good place to start, stop or bridge a collection, and I'm wholeheartedly glad that I bought this album based on tracks that I heard previously.
'The Best of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' is a retrospective that spans 10 years, and 13 albums. The liner notes refer to the songs here as reference points from a much larger journey - these notes also tale Cave's rise from his old band The Birthday Party into his formation with other like minded spooky souls who form The Bad Seeds.
The music is creepy, classic and dangerous. This is violent music of the subtle kind, a much more dangerous form of art, coupled with Nick Cave's personal and/or introspective lyrics based on unresolved destroyed love, death and other warm or disastrous things. And that indeed sums up this album really, it's a collection of warm and harsh extremes, extremes being a keyword to these songs. Many of them if I have to be blunt and category filing, are Southern Gothic landscapes. This album won't offer you hope, and you won't want it, and that's why it's excellent!
I read somewhere that Cave believes he has a way with words because he likes ruminating over the details, and indeed he does - he disects almost everything, even his stripping delivery! If Cave wasn't a lyricist he'd be a good autopsy report writer, indeed. This album isn't all about Cave however, hence the Bad Seeds tag appended to his moniker feature the likes of Blixa Bargeld, formerly of Industrial experimentalists Einsturzende Neubauten add in his own undoubtedly grisly charms around the already menacing Cave.
Many of Cave's lyrics are written and spoken with the persona of a
n adopted character, a troubled one such as the one depicted in the evil circus narration in 'The Carny', and much of the music is very atmospheric, emotional and dynamic. This band is what Bob Dylan would be like if he had bloodlust. There are sensitive moments though like 'Straight To You', 'Nobody's Baby', 'Into My Arms' and 'The Ship Song' (this song is just plain and simply beautiful - hear it!). And oh yes, those 'Murder Ballads' duets with PJ Harvey (the traditional 'Henry Lee') and Kylie Minogue (the eery 'Where The Wild Roses Grow') are here; undoubtedly the most well known tracks from the career of the Cave man.
Another thing I like is that the album is not sorted chronologically, it's been compiled in a very thought out and accessible way, rather than sorting them easily by years. Something that I wish would be in more best of compilations in general. The album even features the production work of people like Flood and Gareth Jones who further enhance the menace of the band. And though packaging is a very unimportant thing, even the packaging is excellent!
Opener 'Deanna' though sounds nothing like most of the songs on the album, it's actually quite cheery and with the sprawling menace of a good mid-paced punk rock song; still a mighty good way to start an album - throw the listener off!
By the second track, the slinky striptease of 'Red Right Hand' sets more of a tone of what's to come with it's seducing bass and percussion. One of my favourites early on in this album has to be the stormy classic of 'Tupelo' depicting both lyrically and musically into vision a horrific storm wiping and destroying everything in it's path. It's a journey!
Further on we get treated to the likes of the outright questioning disturbance of 'Do You Love Me?' and the haunting 'The Mercy Seat'; the escalating 'Tupelo' like th
oughts of a con on an electric chair. Outright despair sets in with the aptly titled 'The Weeping Song', and the 16 track album ends with the mental chaos and fragmented random distortion, and minor key jabs injected in 'From Her To Eternity', one of Cave's first solo efforts, and placed last to depict a reverse and partly interrupted journey of the past and present of the ever dark Cave & The Bad Seeds, continually innovative but never wavering from delving in the darkest areas of the human soul, and showing that. This is dark with a capital D, written in black ink, on black paper.
Definetly a Cave album to buy if you're interested (are you now?), and a good map reference or a starting point to any kind of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds collection. I wholeheartedly recommend this collection, and am very glad I bought it. Perfect listening for cold and/or bitter nights, and Halloween - see the date! To avoid this album really is murder...

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