“An extra 3 inches or your money back guaranteed!”, “cheapest Vi@gra on the www!”, “give her everything she desires!”, “notice results immediately”! Having an e-mail account these days is no better than hanging around at the back of the Glastonbury dance tent shortly after GLC have exited the stage. You’ve been approached, I’ve been approached and it would seem that even ageing archduke of the shadowlands Nick Cave isn’t safe in his private sanctum of pianos and pathos. Or so we crudely presume. He’s got his mojo back from somewhere anyway. You needn’t wait long for proof either. “Get reeeady for luuuurve”, croons he bulbously on ‘Get Ready For Love’, thrashing from the chandeliers and harvesting bountiful stares as the album’s first half crashes melodramatically open, The Bad Seeds beating out a solid path before him.
That’s not to say that listening to his recent records has been anything less than a deep pleasure – taking in any Nick Cave album is unfailingly akin to sampling a shot of the finer things in life. But we had rather presumed he was ambling gracefully through the twilight of his career. Oh, not so. ‘Nocturama’ had just one real hint that this kind of songwriting dissonance was alive and well inside of him – the excessively versed, 15 minute poetic explosion of ‘Babe, I’m On Fire’. The nub of this entire package though is tight with uneasy passion, even its more subdued moments are defined by the posture of a man with his senses so intensely attuned you could balance them on a pin-head. Perhaps it’s more untrusting and suspicious, it’s certainly unfaltering.
There is no vast stylistic division between the two discs of this double set, even less so than Lamchop’s ‘Aw C’mon/No You C’mon’ opus earlier this year. Though if we had to call it ‘Abattoir Blues’ is confidently direct, while ‘The Lyre Of Orpheus’ writhes and grinds and shimmies. Basically they cover the gamut of his capabilities and give you more Cave for your pound. All good. There is vocal jaggedness and disparity, rather than the more sober contemplation we were beginning to get used to. There are lyrical diamonds, couplets to die for. There is such rich use of the London Community Gospel Choir, probably not seen since they last played live with Spiritualized. And The Bad Seeds’ playing is as devastating as you have become accustomed to expect. In fact, this is such a good Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album that surely it has to be downhill from hereon in.