Australian sneer-rock vets Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have come out with their 14th studio LP entitled, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! Though there’s no tracklist info just yet, the album’s artwork is provided by British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster. The disc was released in the UK on March 3 on Anti- (a U.S. release is due in the spring, though a date isn’t set yet).
Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! is the first single from the album of the same name.
Years ago I worked with this Austrian guy,
Fritz who got me into Nick Cave & The Bad
Seeds. He kept raving about their song, “The
Mercy Seat”. So I checked them out and
found an interesting array of eclectic music.
Highlights like: the Doors-like “Tupelo”, a
cover of Elvis’, “In The Ghetto”. The hip 60’s
TV sound of, “Red Right Hand” and a cool
update of Glen Campbell’s, “By The Time I
Get To Phoenix”. Cave cleaned up in 2001 after
20 years of heroin and alcohol abuse. So it’s good to hear
him still in the music biz instead of rehab or
worse!
As far as the video above,”Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!”. . . I dig that funky
groove, baby! Nick’s still got it!
Last sunday there was a nice & in depth interview with him on Belgian / Flemish TV.
Not avaiilable on internet. Here’s the trailer:
http://www.canvas.be/extra/html/programmas/c_spraakmakersII_afl1_nickcave.shtml
This guy shocked the bejeezis out of me around 1990. He was a real eye opener. After my poodle rock teens I suddenly heard songs form his first album that I just couldn’t imagine being played by someone else. Listen to “A box for Black Paul” from From Her to Eternity and you know what I mean.
Somewhere in the nineties he got his act together as an artist and human being. Everything became mature and controlled (like this new single). It really turned me off of him: I much prefer the days of uncontrolled screams, torturing of instruments etc.
That said: I’m glad for him his life worked out, he was one tragic, paranoid junkie those days. But in my opinion in his case a cleaned up act and great art just don’t go together.
FZ and Nick Cave lured me from a childhood of poodle rock. I remember I was really swept away by Box for Black Paul (the last song of Nick’s first solo record From Her to Eternity) – only a piano and a voice, but both so raw, so harsh, so tortured …
Somewhere in the nineties Nick got his life and his music under control. I’m glad for him, but the days where he would injure is instruments to make me feel his hurt were over. He’s a good, professional musician, but I do miss his days of musical abuse.
I think in Nick’s case a controlled life and great art just didn’t go together.
[quote comment=”149″]FZ and Nick Cave lured me from a childhood of poodle rock. I remember I was really swept away by Box for Black Paul (the last song of Nick’s first solo record From Her to Eternity) – only a piano and a voice, but both so raw, so harsh, so tortured …
Somewhere in the nineties Nick got his life and his music under control. I’m glad for him, but the days where he would injure is instruments to make me feel his hurt were over. He’s a good, professional musician, but I do miss his days of musical abuse.
I think in Nick’s case a controlled life and great art just didn’t go together.[/quote]
I certainly do miss those early days of Nick Cave’s “musical abuse” Jeroen. I was hooked the first time I heard his raw and haunting cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Avalanche.”
In anyone’s CD collection (or mine, at least) ‘From Her to Eternity’ and ‘Let Love In’ are staples.
Nick Cave, performing Jime Hendrix music, with :
– the great jazz bass player Charlie Haden
– the Belgian mouth- organ player Toots Tielemans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmuGAP8iCuM&mode=related&search=