Artist – Album: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Murder Ballads
Released: 5th
February 1996
Sounds Like: It should be Tim Burton’s desert island
disc
From his sinister work with previous band goth-rockers The
Birthday Party to the epic and brilliant march to the electric chair ‘The Mercy Seat’, Nick Cave always seems
to have had a morbid fascination with death and violence. So it was hardly
surprising that he would eventually take a stab (pun totally intended) at an
album exclusively devoted to murder ballads.
A collection of traditional and gothic original
compositions, Cave imbues each track with his trademark wit and theatricality. He’s
joined by PJ Harvey on the lovely ‘Henry
Lee’ and, surprisingly, by Kylie Minogue on ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’, the haunting dialogue played out by
killer Cave and his victim Minogue. It was the album’s lead single and its arresting
video got plenty of airplay on MTV, which is mental considering its subject and
uniqueness
Elsewhere, ‘Stagger
Lee’ is an ultra-violent retelling of the famous murder ballad, as far
removed from the Lloyd Price take on the tune as can be. ‘The Curse of Millhaven’ is the darkly funny tale of psychotic
Lottie, who kills because “all God’s children they all gotta die”. And the set
finishes on Dylan cover ‘Death Is Not the
End’, the only song in which Cave is not in character and one which appears
as consolation for the many deaths over the last hour.
A killer album (again, pun intended).
Albumaday... rating:
7/10
1. Song
of Joy – 6:47
2. Stagger
Lee – 5:15
3. Henry
Lee – 3:58
4. Lovely
Creature – 4:13
5. Where
the Wild Roses Grow – 3:57
6. The
Curse of Millhaven – 6:55
7. The
Kindness of Strangers – 4:39
8. Crow
Jane – 4:14
9. O’Malley’s
Bar – 14:28
10. Death
Is Not the End – 4:26
Listen to ‘Stagger Lee’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbe5RERDh4k
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