Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is an Australian rock band with international personnel.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds was originally formed in 1984 by two former members of the Australian band The Birthday Party: Nick Cave (vocals, songwriter, keyboards, harmonica) and multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey. They were joined by Einstьrzende Neubauten member Blixa Bargeld (guitar), Hugo Race (guitar), and former Magazine member Barry Adamson (bass, piano). Cave’s former girlfriend Anita Lane was also a creative influence and occasional lyricist. This line-up recorded their debut album, From Her to Eternity, released in 1984. During their initial Australian tour, Birthday Party bass guitarist Tracy Pew also performed with the band.
The name of the new project indicated the shift in Cave’s role from band member, as in The Birthday Party, to band leader, and coincided with his shift in songwriting style from expressionism to detailed lyrical narrative. The group has been through many personnel changes, with Cave and Harvey remaining the constants.
Cave separated from Lane in the mid-1980s and began a relationship with Elisabeth Recker. While in Berlin, he released four albums with the Bad Seeds: The Firstborn Is Dead; Kicking Against the Pricks; Your Funeral, My Trial; and Tender Prey. Your Funeral, My Trial was the first album to feature the drumming of Swiss Thomas Wydler, who is the longest serving member in the band beside Cave and Mick Harvey.
In 1996, Cave and the Bad Seeds released Murder Ballads. It includes “Henry Lee”, a duet with British rock singer PJ Harvey (with whom he had a brief relationship), and “Where the Wild Roses Grow”, a duet with Australian pop idol Kylie Minogue. The latter was a mainstream hit in the UK and in Australia, winning three ARIA Awards including “Song of the Year”.
Their next album, The Boatman’s Call (1997), is marked by a radical shift away from archetypal and violent narratives to biographical and confessional songs about his relationships with Carneiro and Harvey. It was also his first full album to be centered around his own piano playing.
Cave then took a short break to rehabilitate from his 20 years of heroin and alcohol abuse, during which time he married. The band resurfaced with No More Shall We Part in 2001.
After the release of the 2003 album Nocturama, which failed to excite reviewers, Bargeld announced he was leaving the Bad Seeds to devote more time to Einstьrzende Neubauten, leaving Mick Harvey as the only original member still in the band, other than Cave himself. The next year Cave released his first double record - the acclaimed two-disc set Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus.
In 2005, Cave and the Seeds released B-Sides & Rarities, a three-disc, 56-track collection of B-sides, rarities and tracks that had appeared on film soundtracks.
Cave told Billboard that apart from his album with his other venture Grinderman (nicknamed Mini-Seeds, because it consists of Seeds members - see below), he has recorded the band 14th studio album between June and August 2007. “It’s quite strange to have the two bands going at once because my head is kind of very much in the new Bad Seeds record,” Cave says, “but I finished that and now I’m going to make a new Grinderman one, I think. I just like making records.”
In October 2007 Cave was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. During his acceptance speech he cheekily took it upon himself to also induct the Australian members of the Bad Seeds (excluding Hugo Race), plus the members of The Birthday Party (excluding Phill Calvert).
In March 2008, the band are scheduled to release their 14th studio album, titled Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, inspired by the Biblical story of the resurrection of Lazarus of Bethany by Jesus Christ.
In addition to his performances with the Bad Seeds, Cave has, since the ’90s, performed live ’solo’ tours with Cave on piano, Ellis on violin and a fluctuating bass/drums line-up. The current trio are Bad Seeds’ Martyn P. Casey, Jim Sclavunos and Warren Ellis (nicknamed the Mini-Seeds).
Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus
Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus is the 13th studio album released by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It is a double CD, with 17 songs (9 on Abattoir Blues and 8 on The Lyre of Orpheus), and was released on the 20th of September 2004. Reviews were generally positive.
The double album was recorded by Nick Launay at Studio Ferber in Paris in Spring 2004 by The Bad Seeds line up of Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Thomas Wydler, Martyn Casey, Conway Savage, Jim Sclavunos, Warren Ellis, and James Johnston. It was the first album by the band in which Blixa Bargeld did not take part. Cave decided to split drumming duties for the two albums, having Wydler and Sclavunos drum on each CD.
Its release was shortly followed by the Abattoir Blues Tour, which took place around Europe between the 3rd of November and the 5th of December 2004.
Connection to the Orphic myth
The album’s second disc, The Lyre of Orpheus, can be interpreted as an abstract retelling of the original orphic myth, separate from the version in the title track. Breathless could be seen as Orpheus grieving for Eurydice, whilst Babe, You Turn Me On is his memory of the moment of her death -
Quote:
We stand awed inside a clearing.
We do not make a sound.
The crimson snow falls all about,
carpeting the ground.
Easy Money is a version of Orpheus’ bargain with Hades, with heavy emphasis on the theme of the ease of getting what you want, as long as you are prepared to pay the price. Supernaturally could cover several bases, interpreted as both the protagonist’s drive to rescue his wife, and as a lament for his failure to do so.
Spell is about the doubt slowly taking over Orpheus as he ascends the stairs out of hell - about his uncertainty regarding Hades’ intentions to honour their bargain - and about the final confused moments before his climactic turn—
I call you by your name, I know not where you are.
Carry Me is the album’s climax, the point at which Orpheus turns to look upon Eurydice, breaking his bargain with Hades, and condemning her to being pulled back into the underworld. The song could almost be described as a duet from one mouth, the chorus (possibly from Eurydice’s point of view) asking Orpheus to either give in to his doubt or stick to his word -
Turn to me, turn to me, turn to me
Turn to me and drink of me
Or look away, look away,
look away and never more think of me
Orpheus also speaks of -
The many voices
Speaking to me from the depths below
This ancient wound
This catacomb
Beneath the whited snow
In the end, of course, he turns, and she is carried away.
O Children, the album’s coda, describes the grief of Orpheus, and his death by his own hand, as well as a plea to be forgiven for his sins and to be allowed into heaven.
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