First off, props to Liz Laribee who supplied the wonderful Nick Cave portrait to go with this piece (you can purchase a print here).
Liz is a long-time portrait artist who primarily uses sharpies/pens on cardboard to make unique pieces. When we first started dating she made me Sam Cook and Osamu Tezuka portraits. She made a portrait of my old dog Twinkie that I cherish. By her own admission, it’s been a while, and I’m honored to see her pick up the tools again for this dumb little blog. I’m going to maybe start pairing some artwork with these discography deep dives, so if anyone’s interested in collaborating, let me know. Also, I set up a Collections page for this blog where I’ll round up themed posts, including these pieces. Head on over there in case you want more of these and don’t want to wade through posts about Avatar or sensory deprivation tanks. Ok! On to the piece!
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I was first introduced to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds when I watched them perform at Lollapalooza ‘94. I saw the video for “Do You Love Me?” on MTV before that performance, but to see Nick Cave perform live is to be introduced to him properly. He has the presence of a horror movie villain; not the monster, but the guy who unleashes the monster, thinking he can control it. Nick Cave writes incredibly complex and beautiful music, witty and gothic, and he looks like he would murder you if given the chance, just to see how it made him feel.
After seeing him live, I purchased a copy of Let Love In. I didn’t love it, honestly. Some songs worked for me, but I didn’t put the album on regular rotation. That probably would have been the end of my relationship with Nick Cave’s music if it hadn’t been for catching the cover for Murder Ballads out of the corner of my eye while browsing a record store in downtown Brooklyn. The cover reminded me of Stephen King’s Misery, and the title of the album was titillating, so I picked it up without knowing anything about it, brought it home, and listened to the absolute hardest record I’ve ever heard. Folk song after rock song after folk song documenting murder and love and murder and heartbreak and murder in painstaking detail. At this point in my life, I’ve listened to some murderous hip-hop albums, but Murder Ballads made me blush; I felt like I needed to hide it.
I was in college, at some record store in Harvard Square, when I saw the cover for The Boatman’s Call. I purchased it and listened to it in my dorm room that night and simply melted into my bed, falling in love with no one at all. To expect murder ballads and, instead to hear “Into My Arms,” a song that has stuck with me for over 25 years now, was pleasantly disconcerting.
And then that was it. Those three albums, two of which I played on repeat. A weird fact is I purchased Your Funeral…My Trial and never listened to it. I got it at a used CD shop and remember wanting to listen to it, but just…did not. The same thing happened with The Flaming Lips’ Hear It Is. I bought it cheap, and never listened to it. I don’t really remember doing this with any other albums. Books, sure. But not albums. But this has been rectified, for I have listened to Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ discography and I have many thoughts!
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The Listening
Between January 16th and January 22nd I listened to and annotated the following Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds studio albums in order of release date:
From Her to Eternity (1984)
The Firstborn is Dead (1985)
Kicking Against the Pricks (1986)
Your Funeral…My Trial (1986)
Tender Prey (1988)
The Good Son (1990)
Henry’s Dream (1992)
Let Love In (1994)
Murder Ballads (1996)
The Boatman’s Call (1997)
No More Shall We Part (2001)
Nocturama (2003)
Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (2004)
Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (2008)
Push the Sky Away (2013)
Skeleton Tree (2016)
Ghosteen (2019)
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1. From Her to Eternity (1984)
This album was shocking. I put it on while cooking dinner, expecting something a bit louder than the Nick Cave I’ve grown to love but instead, getting assaulted with such a cacophony that I needed to pause the album after two songs and find a different environment to listen to it. It demanded a different kind of attention than background music while slicing onions.
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Interlude: A Conversation With Liz Laribee
As I was listening to the second track on this album on our little kitchen speaker, Liz came up from behind me and asked, “Is Nick Cave OK?”
“I mean, probably not.”
“What genre of music is this?”
“I don’t know. Avante rock?”
“What’s acid rock?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s this.”
“It’s interesting.”
“Yeah. It’s that.”
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I decided to take a nighttime drive with the rest of the album since my car has my best audio system. The music covered me. It was dark and threatening blues - atonal whacks on the piano, discordant guitars, whispers, and whatnot - none of the songs had any peace within them. It grew on me. It was like floating on sludge.
2. The Firstborn is Dead (1985)
Nick Cave’s second album, The Firstborn is Dead, continued in its macabre exploration of personal relationships, added a bit of an outlaw country vibe, and the blues arrangements moved towards a tonal center but didn’t exactly get there. We’re at a point now where I can start to see glimmers of the Nick Cave I’m most familiar with. Grinding and playful repetition of lyrics, a musical backbone that sounds like the thumping of a heartbeat; like an angry metronome averaging 60 beats per minute; like a warning.
Later, I listened to this album while running and found my legs and body naturally keeping with the thump, thump, THUMP of the album. My time was terrible, about a 12-minute-mile, but I love it when I have a soundtrack.
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Interlude: Listening to Albums When You Run
In both the Sonic Youth and Gang Starr pieces, I specifically called out the albums I listened to while running. I want to take a beat to say that it wasn’t until last year that I started listening to albums while running. Before that, I would just put on my daily playlist from Tidal (or, before that, Spotify or, before that, some MP3 mix or, before that, a mix CD or, before that, a mix tape), but last year I was working on 365 new-to-me albums, and it turned out that running was a great time to take one in.
For starters, it’s uninterrupted time. Over 30 minutes and up to a couple of hours, depending on the day. I’m not listening to an album and doing work, playing a video game, or doing another activity that’ll distract me. I get pulled into the music when I run - I notice the beat more, and I ruminate on the lyrics. The latter could get distracting in its own way, I’ve often ruminated on a particular turn of phrase and missed an entire song, but if that’s part of the discovery, that’s fine. An album also gives my run a theme. It sets a pace and a throughline to be followed. It makes the same routes feel different; gives every mile a new perspective.
I used to only listen to hip-hop when running, but what I’m finding now is that any song with a pounding motif works wonders. John Carpenter's albums, for example, are excellent to run to. That slow, driving build. A sound that blends into the environment as you run; a sound that becomes part of the trees, exposes the defects in the buildings I pass. Sonic Youth had albums that were incredible for running; the improvisational spirit of those songs paired well with the changing terrain as I’d go from streets to bike paths to bridges to dirt. I think Nick Cave is great to run to for a different reason: that pounding bass and drum.
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3. Kicking Against the Pricks (1986)
This is an album full of covers - some interesting selections, like an unconventional cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe.” What I liked about this album, and Nick Cave’s approach to covers in general, is that none of the songs were even close to direct translations of the source. But, also, Cave’s arrangements all sound different from each other. Some of these songs are downright bouncy, some have elegant synths on the tracks. Now, did Cave arrange all of these songs himself? I don’t know, and I’m about to go check the credits, but no matter what, I’m going to keep this paragraph as-is because it’s time for an interlude:
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Interlude: I Don’t Know Any of These Motherfuckers’ Names
This is a truism with any rock band that’s ever existed - not just the Bad Seeds - but outside of the lead singer and maybe one additional member, I don’t know any of these motherfuckers’ names. Even if it’s a band I love. Pavement, for example, is one of my all-time favorite bands - I know every song on their studio albums by heart - and I know lead singer Steven Malkamus. And then I don’t know any of the rest of those motherfuckers. The Beatles - that’s the one rock band where I can name all those motherfuckers.
When it comes to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, I know Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, the latter only because there was a Warren Ellis in comics (he’s still alive, just career dead) who would make jokes about not being the Warren Ellis from the Bad Seeds. The rest of those motherfuckers, though? Couldn’t even tell you initials. Couldn’t even tell you what they look like, and I saw them perform live twice.
Now, rap groups? I can name every single one of those motherfuckers. Why? Because they say their names on every song. They also call out their DJ. It’s such a fantastic system that I think rock bands should employ so that people like me could learn those motherfuckers’ names.
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Anyway, I couldn’t figure out who’s credited with arranging the songs on Kicking Against The Pricks, but I did learn that the other motherfuckers in the Bad Seeds, at this point, are Thomas Wydler, Barry Adamson, Mick Harvey, and Blixa Bargeld. I also learned that Warren Ellis didn’t join the band until 1994! So he’s not on any of these albums yet. Anyway, I will promptly forget these motherfuckers’ names.
4. Your Funeral…My Trial (1986)
Ah, yes, the album that I purchased so many years ago and never listened to. It was, in a word, fantastic. Truly fantastic. The first album in the set that made me go, “Ok, yeah, these guys definitely know what they’re doing.” There was just more cohesion in these songs. Everything worked, and everyone was playing together. The production sounded crisper; the lyrics were silken smooth when they needed to be, and spat out through gritted teeth when they needed to be. It felt like an album where everyone knew what they were doing and why.
It was also the album where I first said, “Jeez, Nick Cave really has a bunch of songs about murdering women.” I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention this, especially considering my lengthy asides in the Gang Starr piece about the role women play in hip-hop lyrics. I understand that this plays toward that Delta blues angle, outlaw country, etc - songs about murdering women are an understood part of early-1900s American music that continued into the 60s and probably beyond. Still, the volume of songs about murdering women on Nick Cave’s albums is shocking.
What else is shocking? I didn’t really even think about it until the fourth album. I’m not even making a judgment - hip-hop songs are full of murder - the world is full of murder. It’s just interesting to me that it took this long into the discography to say, “Hmph. This feels like a lot of songs about murdering women.” I went back and looked at the lyrics of the first four albums, and sure enough, they all have a bunch of songs about women who meet a violent fate:
From Her To Eternity - 3ish out of 7 tracks
“Well of Misery” is about a girl who fell down a well and died
“From Her to Eternity” ends with the narrator plotting to kill the upstairs neighbor he’s obsessed with
“A Box for Black Paul” ends with the narrator expressing his desire to bury his gal
Although not explicit, I’m pretty sure the narrator at the end of “Wings Off Flies” kills someone; he definitely kills a lot of flies, at least
The Firstborn is Dead - surprisingly, no dead women!
This doesn’t count, but “Tupelo” features a stillborn, but it’s a boy
Also doesn’t count, but “Little Girl Tree” is about the narrator killing himself by hanging
I gotta imagine the narrator in “I’m a Bad Man” has killed a woman or two, given how many places he’s wanted for murder
Kicking Against the Pricks - In Cave’s defense, he didn’t write any of these songs. But he sure picked them! Anyway, 2 out of 14
“I’m Gonna Kill That Woman,” the title says it all
“Hey Joe,” Jimi Hendrix’s song where the narrator shoots his old lady
Doesn’t count, but “Long Back Veil” is centered on murder, at least, and a man who takes the rap to hide the fact that he was sleeping with his best friend’s wife
Your Funeral…My Trial, 2 out of 8
“Your Funeral…My Trial,” it’s not explicit but, you know, the implication
“Long Time Man” is very clearly about a man who shot his wife
Anyway, this concludes my segment on murdering women. Maybe.
5. Tender Prey (1988)
So, onto Tender Prey. But I mean, Jesus Christ, look at these album titles that I’m not even commenting on. Ok, for real, concluding my segment on murdering women. Tender Prey - a very slight fall-off from Your Funeral…My Trial, but still a great listen. The piano is stronger on this album, and there’s a bit of vulnerability in Cave’s vocals that I haven’t picked up on previous albums. He stretches his voice more. I like when he stretches his voice. I’ll tell you who unconditionally loved it, though: my mother-in-law.
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Interlude: MiL Reviews Tender Prey
I was in the living room, listening to Tender Prey when MiL sauntered in with her bathrobe and her iPad and sat across from me. Four times she asked who I was listening to, and four times I said, “Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds,” and four times she enthusiastically said, “They’re good!” When the song “Mercy” was on, she added, “Very powerful,” and when “Sunday’s Slave” came on she added, “It’s so interesting, he doesn’t even have a good voice!” Each time I answered with, “They’re great! Their songs are exclusively about romance, religion, and murder, though, so watch out when you listen to them,” and each time, she laughed very hard.
There are benefits to living with someone with Alzheimer’s; one benefit is that if a joke works, you can use it over and over and get the same response. For example, MiL has been reading the same ten pages of a biography of Bonhoeffer since she moved in almost two years ago. Every time she opens the book, we have this conversation:
MiL: Do you speak German?
Me: I do!
MiL: What does this mean?
<MiL reads the opening dedication, which is in German>
Me: Uh, let’s see…”My favorite smurf is Papa Smurf. He is strong, but he is not cocky about it. His beard is subversively feminine.”
I’ll say different things there, sometimes truly scandalous and others mundane, but every time I get the biggest laugh. It feels great! And she’s laughing, so where’s the harm? Anyway, she loved this album, probably because there were some religious undertones, and I’ll be sure to play it for her again sometime.
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Inception Interlude: MiL Also Reviews The Good Son
Liz has also joined us in the living room to draw a portrait of Nick Cave for this piece. We decided to play The Good Son as she draws, and over the course of the opening song, “Foi Na Cruz,” we got THREE, “Who is this?” a whole bunch of, “This is good,” and a couple of satisfied sighs. I gotta say, though, this is a beautiful song. MiL is sitting across from me right now, eyes closed, swaying to this song. She doesn’t resonate with much anymore, but she is loving this music.
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Our job is to keep MiL happy and calm. And it is really beautiful to see her connecting with songs like these, even if most of them are about murdering women. Nick Cave and those other motherfuckers can write the hell out of a beautiful song.
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6. The Good Son (1990)
From the first bar, it’s apparent that The Good Son is going to be a truly great album. And let me be very clear, this album is, indeed, fucking great. We got strings and synths and harmonies - there are Gospel roots in these songs, but edged with bits of Cave’s dark humor. The whole house vibed to this album; we moved to it and were moved by it. This album will be added to the house playlist; there is no other way to put it, and nothing else I can say about it.
7. Henry’s Dream (1992)
Henry’s Dream has the unfortunate job of following The Good Son. It starts quite aggressively, a bit disconcerting following The Good Son’s vibrant, Gospel feel, and stays there for a bit, ending with some sweeter-sounding songs that are pretty good but none particularly great. They can’t all be bangers!
8. Let Love In (1994)
On to Let Love In, my first introduction to Nick Cave, which I’m listening to for the first time with grown man ears. And let me say…it is Nick Cave’s horniest album in his discography so far. I think when I was a wee teen, I didn’t pick up on the absolute horniness of this record, because as a wee teen, horniness was basically, “i GoTtA pUt ThIs In SoMeThInG!” None of the songs are sexy, but they are all horny as hell. Nick Cave has perfected his Dark Elvis persona, or whatever he’s going for on this album, and his lyrical delivery is almost a cartoonish take on that trembling baritone of a voice that we associate with the King of Rock. That delivery is associated with sexiness in our heads, but the songs are just aggressively horny. Like, “Loverman,” a song that as a teen I just kind of associated with a guy who’s, you know, who likes to bone or whatever but, as an adult, Jesus Christ, I was flustered listening to this horny-ass song. It is 100% about a woman who’s about to get raped? The question mark is there because there’s an alternate reading where it’s more of a domination thing and another reading where it’s just a sexually repressed partner fantasizing. Still, either way, there is a complicated power dynamic in that song that, I promise you, Elvis never once sang about.
And then there’s “Red Right Hand,” a song we all remember from that movie/TV show. Which movie/TV show depends on who you’re talking to, I guess. X-Files? All of the Scream films? Hellboy? Peaky Blinders? Real ones will say Dumb and Dumber.
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Interlude: In Defense of the Low-Brow
I first saw Dumb and Dumber in theaters. When “Red Right Hand” came on, I felt a sense of pride that I knew the song. I told my friend, “This is a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds song,” in a very, you never heard of them tone, to which he replied, “No shit.” But, you know, as I got older and started to approach music and films as broader art forms it struck me as weird that high-brow Nick Cave would lend his music to low-brow Dumb and Dumber. Now, don’t get me wrong - Dumb and Dumber, much like most of Jim Carrey’s early films, is a cinematic triumph. There is no irony there; that movie is untouchably funny, and every minute of it works. But it’s low-brow. Who gives a shit? Low-brow stuff can be great, and it’s just as hard to make low-brow stuff great as it is to make high-brow stuff great.
But back to it seeming weird that high-brow Nick Cave would lend a song to low-brow Dumb and Dumber. That sentence is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever typed.
First of all, Nick Cave’s subject matter up to this point is the fodder for pulp novels. Murder, crime, outlaws, demons, and sex are low-brow content. Yeah, there’s poetry, and the musical arrangements present a fascinating tension with the lyrics. I’d now classify Nick Cave’s songs, up to Let Love In and (spoiler alert!) Murder Ballads, as “Low-Brow Highbrow.”
Second of all, as stated, Dumb and Dumber is transcendental. That film is “High-Brow Lowbrow.”
The only indefensible art form is middle-brow which, unfortunately, is most music and film these days.
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Finally, my last thought on Let Love In, “Do You Love Me?” is still a tremendous banger. It was my first introduction to Nick Cave, both on MTV and at Lollapalooza ‘94, and what an intro it is.
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Interlude: Lollapalooza ‘94
Randall’s Island, NYC. The first concert I went to without parental supervision, with my crush and my friend Max. We instantly got separated from Max before a single band took to the stage. My crush and I got to the very front of the stage for Greenday. As soon as the music started, we learned what a mosh pit was, and I watched as she got sucked into the audience, gone until the end of the set. While I was looking for her, I experienced The Flaming Lips on a side-stage for the first time.
We skipped L7 to recuperate and listened to Nick Cave from the sidelines. I needed to see A Tribe Called Quest up close, so we made our way back to the main stage. We listened to The Breeders and George Clinton from the sidelines and made our way back up for Beastie Boys and The Smashing Pumpkins. When the Beastie Boys sang “Sabotage,” there was a moment when they left the crowd in darkness for a solid minute before hitting that bassline (if you know the song you know the one), and then brought every single light up for Ad Rock’s scream. It was electric. I later crowd-surfed for the first time to The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Rocket.”
We never found Max. We waited at the rendezvous spot but didn’t see him. We hadn’t seen him all day; we were kind of wondering if he already left, or if he was escorted out, or whatever else. My crush’s dad drove us home. The next day, I found out Max had waited for us for an hour and finally found a phone to call home for his own ride. I still feel bad about that, but that was also teenage life before cell phones.
Max and I are still good friends. Not sure what my old crush is up to.
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9. Murder Ballads (1996)
As fascinating in 2023 as it was in 1996. Some of the most beautiful songs ever put on a record, all but one about violent murders. One of Nick Cave and the Bad Seed’s best-reviewed albums, and their best-selling album, it certainly received the attention it commanded. Liz and I listened to the album in the car. I know the album incredibly well; Liz never heard it before. “Henry Lee” and “The Curse of Millhaven” were classified as ‘beautiful’ and ‘really interesting,’ respectively. Halfway through “Wild Rose,” the fourth song on the album, Liz realized I had sung every single word on the album so far and commented, “You…uh…you really know this album, huh?” Realizing the man you share a bed with knows every lyric to every song on this album is particularly off-putting because, well…because of all the murders. I made a handy chart of the murders detailed in Murder Ballads, broken down by victim demographics.
There are 65 detailed murders across this album's nine songs. Unlike on past Nick Cave albums, most of the murder victims AREN’T women. In fact, only eight of the 65 victims are women. Adult men lead the pack (31 murders), followed by children at 24. There was one dog murder. The songs with the highest body counts (“The Curse of Millhaven” and “Crow Jane”) feature women as the murderers, so…I don’t know, progress? The other songs feature male murderers. These numbers are a bit misrepresentative, however. In “Song of Joy,” the narrator claims the murderer (who, spoiler alert, is the narrator) has murdered “many, many more,” following the stabbing deaths of his wife and three children. And in “The Curse of Millhaven,” the narrator (the murderous Loretta) admits to starting “the fire of ‘91 that razed the Bella Vista slum.” She doesn’t mention any deaths during this confession, but considering the fact that “the biggest shit-fight this country’s ever seen” resulted in “insurance companies ruined” and “landlords gettin’ sued,” I have to imagine there were a few deaths. I mean, even secondary and tertiary deaths - razing an entire area will have lasting, even generational impacts. Immediate impacts of an already economically depressed community losing their houses, possessions, and entire foundation would undoubtedly result in illness, mental health concerns, and food scarcity. Add to that how these seismic shifts in any semblance of stability would impact the future livelihood of younger generations as they move through life - the youthful body may be resilient, but these traumas greatly impact the mind. It is impossible to even estimate the detrimental impact Loretta had on Millhaven.
The distribution of methods of murder is shown below.
A lot of gun-related deaths; 33 total. The aforementioned Loretta doesn’t use a gun once but our second-most prolific murderer, Crow Jane, exclusively uses a gun to take revenge on the 20 miners who have raped her. The man behind the mass shooting at O’Malley’s Bar almost exclusively uses a gun except when it comes to O’Malley’s daughter, the bartender Siobhan, who is strangled. Loretta is more creative, with her largest single tally resulting from the 20 kids who “broke through the ice on Lake Tahoo,” following Loretta’s removal of the warning sign. Is this murder, negligent homicide, or manslaughter? That’s up to the courts to decide, my friend.
One thing that I can absolutely, positively, say for sure: This album is bananas. And as a follow-up, Nick Cave makes one of the greatest collections of love songs of all time:
10. The Boatman’s Call (1997)
It’s always as good as the last time you heard it, if not better. When I first listened to this album, back in my college days, I would always drop the CD player back to track one to listen to “Into My Arms” again. I’ve since learned to love these songs equally as a singular, perfect structure. “Where Do We Go But Nowhere?” still stops me in my tracks. “Black Hair” still takes my breath. Every time I listen to this album, it feels like returning to every home I’ve ever had. My parents' house in Brooklyn. My college dorm rooms. My first studio in DC. The one-bedroom apartment I rented in SE with the roaches. My first apartment in Arlington where I sold my first script. The apartment in Courthouse where I celebrated my first book. The house we bought, which was the same house I bought several years later, which is the same house Liz and I bought several years ago. I have a memory of these songs in every incarnation of every place I’ve ever been in. I guess if you have to listen to one Nick Cave album, this should be the one. It’s just as good as my nostalgia for it and worthy of my sappiest praise.
11. No More Shall We Part (2001)
This album represents a growth in the Bad Seeds’ sound. Cave’s voice stretches further, and the instruments, which have an expanded roster, are given more time to breathe. There are a lot of pleasant instrumentals on this album, which I don’t remember hearing much of on previous albums. But that’s all music detail stuff; stuff that I’m not smart enough to talk smartly about. What’s striking about this album is that many of the songs sound like songs of praise. Liz picked up on it too; we were in the car when she said, “Nick Cave sounds like he might have spent his younger years in the church. These songs sound Methodist.”
Cave certainly has at least thought about religion a lot in his life. When he sings about religion, it is with scholarly precision. He goes between third-party reverent observation to witty criticism, at times understanding how religion can act as a soothing influence on a soul, and at times cleverly skewering the impact religion has on both a person and a collective. “God Is In the House” is a perfect subversive critique of people using organized religion to ignore greater societal ills; to whitewash their worldview. The lyrics sound like a congregation making a pitch through the song that gets more and more exclusionary. First, there’s no crime in this town. Then there’s no sneaks, no geeks, no drug freaks. There are no gay people in this town, but the added benefit, according to the song, is there is also no one beating them up with tire irons. That’s city stuff. Then there are no therapists, no drunks. All their kittens are white, so you can see them at night. Cave’s voice gets quieter and quieter as the song ends with:
Since the word got out
From the North down to the South
For no-one’s left in doubt
There’s no fear about
If we all hold hands and very quietly shout
Hallelujah
God is in the house
God is in the house
Oh I wish He would come out
God is in the house
The song is effectively about a town that has cast out all perceived evils in the hope that God will come out, and in the end, they silence their own voices. They become insignificant and small, prayerful and hopeful that God will just be present with them, even just once, to prove them justified. It’s a far cry from the criticisms of religion we normally see in rock music. It’s smart, it’s thoughtful;- it doesn’t decry God, but rather people’s relationship to their idea of God.
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Interlude: I’m With Cave, Here
If I’m going to talk about religion, I feel like I should at least give my background. It’s only right.
My sister and I were raised Catholic by my mom, and my dad was an Episcopalian. I went to CCD on Wednesday ahead of Communion and Confirmation. In between those sacraments, I became an altar boy. I enjoyed being an altar boy; the priests and monsignor were all really nice. I liked Father Michael in particular, who took us all to Great Adventure one year, and was always available if someone needed to talk. The church itself was a typical ornate Catholic church in a middle-class Italian neighborhood.
I started calling myself agnostic in high school, occasionally flirting with going back to church in college and beyond. In my early 30s, I went to an Episcopal church in Arlington a few times, and when Liz first moved to the area, she lived in an intentional community associated with a church that I also attended a few times. During this point in my life, I’d waffle back and forth between atheist and agnostic, and where I think I am right now is firmly in the “I don’t care” camp.
I just really don’t care. Liz and I do a lot of good in our community; We take care of MiL’s many financial, health, and emotional needs; We donate a significant portion of our income to local charities; We love each other; We love and support our family and friends; and we also take the time to take care of ourselves, so that we’re not these weirdos with martyr fetishes.
Conversely, many religious folks I know don’t meet half of that criteria. Some don’t meet any, and a good chunk of folks I’ve come across are happily opposites.
So, I don’t care. If God exists, and Heaven is real, and I don’t get in but some of these other folks do,I don’t want to be there anyway. I’ll take my chance in Hell, I guess.
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12. Nocturama (2003)
Nocturama has a fair number of praise songs but with more rock and Gospel elements thrown back in. Even though I’m saying praise songs, not all of these songs are about religion. Few are, in fact. For example, the album ends with a 14-minute rock-forward song called “Babe, I’m On Fire,” which is about how everyone in the world, from the hump-backed bell ringer to Bill Gates, knows that Nick Cave is horny for his girl. The song, which fundamentally rocks, has a Gospel vibe beneath the surface as well - not exactly a call-and-response, but certainly a group refrain that’s repeated over and over. Sort of like “Lord, hear our prayer” during the general intercessions but, instead, “I’m on fire.”
13. Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (2004)
I had a hard time getting into Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. I’m listening to these albums back-to-back for the first time, and the process makes it a bit difficult to come to terms with tonal shifts. I loved the sound of No More Shall We Part and Nocturama, that praise/Gospel feel, but Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus brings some of the blues and hard rock elements back into the mix, and at times it almost feels regressive. But as I made my way through the album and realized it was actually more retrospective, a pastiche of all that the Bad Seeds have been but with Nick Cave’s matured themes. I started to appreciate it more and ultimately ended up liking it quite a bit. I think I need to revisit this album after I take a little space from Nick Cave and appreciate it for what it is, and not just as the album that followed Nocturama.
14. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (2008)
This album introduces an entirely new feel to the Bad Seed’s repertoire - just straight-up hard rock. Boogie rock, almost. There have been songs that crossed over into that genre, but this entire album is full of driving, looping bass and guitars. It starts out great: the titular “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!” being a humorous take on the Lazarus myth, set in 1970s NYC. There’s an ongoing refrain of, “I don't know what it is, but there's definitely something going on upstairs,” used first to describe the crying of his mother over his grave, and later used as a declaration of how weird and meaningless it was that he somehow came back to life only to end up right back where he had been. I never really thought of the Lazarus myth in that way - did the guy really want to come back?
15. Push The Sky Away (2013)
Push The Sky Away goes quiet again. Probably Cave’s quietest album since A Boatman’s Call, maybe his quietest to date. A lot of pianos and strings, while guitars, bass, and drums are muted or non-existent on certain songs. Many of the tracks sounded familiar, probably because I saw the tour that followed the release of this album with my friend Scott at DAR Constitution Hall. We had seats in the very last row but snuck up to the stage for the second half. I don’t remember a ton of details if I’m being honest, but I remember the show being quite electric.
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Interlude: Concerts With Scott
Scott White is a tremendous illustrator and friend who I’ve known for well over a decade now. We’ve collaborated on several projects and had one particularly fun pitch that almost got picked up by the Washington Post until the editor we were working with got moved, and the project sort of died. For that pitch, Scott and I were going to visit spots in DC/Maryland/Virginia (DMV for folks who don’t know) that were a bit out of our comfort zone and then make a comic about our experience; sort of like my floatation tank posts (one and two, so far) but with illustrations.
Maybe as a byproduct of that failed pitch, Scott and I hit up a few concerts in 2014 and 2015. We saw St. Vincent and Nick Cave, and then Scott took me to my first-ever metal show in Richmond (which would have made for an excellent WaPo story, honestly. Call me!) This was during a time in my life when any escape from the house was greatly appreciated, and I look back on these shows fondly, especially considering that I went to several other concerts by myself including Neutral Milk Hotel twice as well as Run the Jewels. Those weren’t good years, and going to shows was a wonderful reprieve. It might have been the only time in my life that I used concerts defensively in that way, but I do recommend it. Nothing like standing in a crowd of sweaty, cheering, fellow fans for three hours to forget about what’s going on at home.
Things are good at home now, but even still, Scott, if you’re reading this, let’s go to a concert sometime soon.
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16. Skeleton Tree (2016)
It would probably be impossible to listen to Skeleton Tree and not cry once or twice, even without knowing the context. There is so much pain in this album: in the arrangements that consist of nothing but synthesizers and drum machines, as well as in the lyrics. Nick Cave isn’t stretching his voice in this one - it’s baritone with a vibrato that makes his voice sound like he's spent the past hour crying, and he’s just trying to get these thoughts out. As context, Cave was recording this album when his son Arthur died. This album felt like a stone in my heart.
Cave’s examination of loss is miraculous in how grandly understated it is. How helpless he admits to being. How important it is to have his wife by his side, even if it can’t take the loss away. The open to “I Need You” killed me:
When you're feeling like a lover, nothing really matters anymore
I saw you standing there in the supermarket
With your red dress falling and your eyes are to the ground
Nothing really matters, nothing really matters when the one you love is gone
With incredible precision, Cave calls to mind the moments when loss hits hardest - in places you hardly ever associate with emotions. Places you see as you run your errands, places you visit every day and can hardly remember any particular time because the practice of it is so mundane. It’s at these times, when your brain is on autopilot, that the full weight of loss can hit you. Your guard is down, and maybe you remember a favorite food or picking up diapers years ago, or maybe nothing at all, and you’re not prepared for feelings.
I’ve never experienced a loss on the level of Cave’s. To lose one son, let alone (as of last year) two. Fully realized humans with a past. They have touched lives; you’ve watched them grow; spent so many moments with them. I’ve lost people through the years, and not all to old age and natural causes, but I couldn’t even imagine the pain of losing a child. I’ve seen people power through it, and it looks like it takes incredible strength, but I can’t even imagine where that strength would come from. I guess you find it or you don’t. Cave uses his music to focus on his loss, to bare his soul and suffering in a way that feels like strength to an outside observer but is cathartic to Cave, I imagine.
17. Ghosteen (2019)
And that brings me to Nick Cave and the Bad Seed’s last album, Ghosteen, the album written entirely after the death of Cave’s son. An album about loss and support and moving forward. I cried listening to most of these songs. It is very difficult for me to even think or write about this album without thinking and writing about something I haven’t talked about yet. The only way I can describe this album is that it felt like October 20th, 2021.
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Interlude: October 20th, 2021
We had a miscarriage in April of 2021, which is how we found out we had been pregnant. We had to go to the hospital to see if there was anything that needed to be attended to. When the doctor finished the ultrasound and left Liz and me to get our stuff together, I started crying. I said, “I never expected our first ultrasound to be like this.”
When we found out we were pregnant in September of the same year, we decided to treat it like a blessing. The day Liz tested positive, I started reading to her belly - a chapter at a time of The Little Prince. We began to prepare the house for a child early on since we had some major pieces that needed to be put in place. The plan was to move MiL to what was the office at the time, turn MiL’s room into a nursery, and build a second bathroom in the basement. I started selling a bunch of my childhood knick-knacks and video games to prepare for the renovation. We told our families earlier than we should have, with the caveat that we knew it was early, but any sense of joy had been robbed from us the first time.
Late October was when the bleeding began. Spotting mostly, but enough to worry us. But it didn’t stop, and it grew a bit heavier. But it was nothing close to what we had experienced with the first pregnancy loss, so we sat tight and waited for our next visit with the doctor. I still read every night to Liz’s belly. I felt like if I did that, what was growing inside her would know that it would be coming into a loving home. Maybe give it a little extra strength. The last day I read to Liz’s belly, we both knew where this was going but wouldn’t say it out loud. It was a particularly poignant chapter about letting go. We cried, and kissed, and went to bed. The next day the doctor confirmed the miscarriage.
That was October 21st, 2021.
I hardly remember that day. I remember the night before, as Liz and I were caring for each other. That care led me to read a chapter anyway, just in case. That feeling started to simmer, that no matter what, we were going to be OK because we have each other. We were going to be OK because we were good people who cared, who weren’t afraid to hope, but who would also hold each other up if the worst were to happen.
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That’s what I mean when I say listening to Ghosteen felt like October 20th, 2021. Liz sat across from me drawing portraits, not really paying attention to the album. But when she looked up and saw me crying during “Bright Horses”, she knew, and she reached out and grabbed my hand. And here we are, a year and three months later, still helping each other get over these losses. By the time the album was over, I felt lighter.
I don’t have anything else to say. I just want to thank Nick Cave for making Ghosteen. I don’t know if I can ever listen to it again, but I’m glad I listened to it on January 22nd, 2023.
And that concludes Nick Cave’s discography. Every album was, at a minimum, very good. The Good Son, Murder Ballads, No More Shall We Part, and Push The Sky Away were excellent.
Ghosteen was a revelation; one of the best albums I’ve ever heard. It may not have the same impact on everyone, but it resonated with me on a spiritual level, and that’s all it takes to make a favorite album.
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Special thanks to Liz Laribee for her heavy edits on this piece, and for standing by me as I told our story.