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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Reissues

At the turn of millennium, old-school Nick Cave fans had good reason to believe the singer's fiery heart had been extinguished by middle age. In 1997, at age 40, he released his most delicate, introspective album, The Boatman's Call, to universal acclaim, making it the go-to Nick Cave album for people who never really liked Nick Cave. And then, thanks to a sober-up sabbatical, the usually prolific songwriter took four years to follow it up with the ornate No More Shall We Part; by 2002, this one-time contemporary of Lydia Lunch and Swans was covering the Beatles' "e;Let It Be"e; alongside the likes of Sheryl Crow and Sarah McLachlan on the soundtrack to the Sean Penn TV-movie-of-the-week-style weepie I Am Sam. Cave had never made a secret of his admiration for the likes of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen; now, it seemed he was content to settle into a similar late-career routine of steadily releasing respectable albums that would allow him to grow old with his aging fans, rather than court new ones.

But if Cave's course seemed predetermined at the start of the decade, the final installments in Mute's 25th anniversary (28th anniversary by now) Bad Seeds reissue campaign cover a period of great upheaval and rejuvenation. Of course, the sense of rediscovery here is undermined by the fact that these records are still in print and fresh in memory, and the trajectory they chart feels incomplete without the inclusion of Grinderman, the more feral Bad Seeds offshoot that formed over this span. But, collectively, these records provide rare evidence of a band that continues to produce to career-besting work well into their third decade.  And as per the series standard, each album here has been repackaged with B-sides, 5.1-channel stereo DVD audio mixes, videos, and the final chapters of Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard's always-illuminating talking-head documentaries Do You Love Me Like I Love You-- albeit, sadly, with 90% less Blixa.

At the very least, these reissues should reassert the importance of Nocturama in the Bad Seeds canon, given that the album's jarring stylistic shifts were initially greeted with an equally divisive reception. Where No More Shall We Part reasserted the Bad Seeds' rock-noir majesty in gradual, controlled gestures, Nocturama is more like a loosely screwed light bulb that flickers on and off in spurts. Eight of its 10 songs capture Cave in piano-man crooner mode, at times to overly sentimental effect-- see: "e;Rock of Gibraltar"e;, a song destined to go down as Cave's "e;Mull of Kintyre"e;. But Nocturama marked the start of a fruitful reunion between Cave and his Birthday Party producer Nick Launay, and is ultimately remembered for its two outliers: the Grinderman dry-run "e;Dead Man in My Bed"e; and the incomparable "e;Babe, I'm on Fire"e;, a breathless 15-minute, 38-verse tour de farce that provides a peak-power showcase of both the Bad Seeds' sleazeball swagger and Cave's peerless wordsmithery. It is, in essence, a love song to kill all other love songs, personifying the manic ecstasy of romance through kinship with an "e;unlucky amputee,"e; "e;menstruating Jewess,"e; "e;rapist on a roll,"e; and 100-plus other wayward souls seemingly on-call from some bizarro-world reality-TV show.

Beyond reawakening the Bad Seeds' inner beast, Nocturama signaled a shift in Cave's songwriting perspective. His lyric sheet up to that point had been mostly a pastiche of old-school signifiers, drawing on the blues, the Bible, and the Beats. But Nocturama revealed a growing interest in the modern world, America specifically. And while Cave's work has never been lacking for black humor, Nocturama evinced a greater willingness to embrace the absurd (as epitomized by the outrageous videos that accompany "e;Babe"e; and lead single "e;Bring It On"e;). It follows, then, that Cave's next release would embody his own funhouse-mirror view of life during wartime: Arriving just in time for Dubya's second term, 2004's double-album opus Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus deviously blurred the line between religious-fundamentalist fervor and bloodthirsty savagery.

Recorded live off the floor in Paris' historic Studio Ferber, the 17-song set is, to my ears, the Bad Seeds' most visceral, vibrant recording to date, thanks in great part to an omnipresent church choir that serves less as a vessel for spiritual uplift than a sneering critique of organized religion. (From the gate-crashing opener "e;Get Ready for Love"e;: "e;Praise Him till you forgot what you're praising Him for/ Then praise Him a little bit more."e;) The Bad Seeds' first recording without the corrupting influence of long-time guitar-scraper Blixa Bargeld, Abattoir Blues compensates for his dissonant edge with pure gospel punk muscle, while Lyre of Orpheus elevates Cave's balladeer guise to a grand, widescreen scale. But, in their own unique ways, both present a response to the looming threat of holy war: where Abattoir's "e;Hiding All Away"e; sadistically champions it as cause for celebration ("e;There is a war coming!"e;), Orpheus' mournful closer "e;Carry Me"e; and "e;O Children"e; constitute last-ditch pleas for salvation.  

Abattoir/Orpheus was going to be a hard act to follow and, judging by the lack of outtakes on offer here, one that drew the creative well dry at the time. But instead of trying to top it, Cave wisely stripped down, hijacking fellow Bad Seeds Sclavunous, Warren Ellis, and Martyn Casey for a barrage-rock regression-therapy session as Grinderman. The satellite band further mined Cave's growing obsession with American pop culture and was enthusiastically received by old and new Cave fans alike. But its ultimate purpose may have well been to serve as a sort-of Bad Seeds boot camp. Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! scraped away Grinderman's surface squall, but retained its streetwise, dick-swinging attitude (and porn-star 'taches). And true to its conflation of the sacred and the profane-- resurrecting the New Testament's Lazarus as a hustler in modern-day New York City-- Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is at once the Bad Seeds' most classic rockin' album to date (with "e;Today's Lesson"e; built upon the "e;Jenny says"e; template of the Velvets' "e;Rock & Roll"e;), and its most sonically adventurous, as heard in the eerily disembodied krautrock of "e;Night of the Lotus Eaters"e; (though, sadly, the bonus disc neglects to include the more menacing version the Bad Seeds used to open shows on their 2008 tour).

Cave turned 50 during Lazarus' recording, but the only hints of aging arise when he turns the pen on himself and his process: Just as the Abattoir Blues standout "e;There She Goes, My Beautiful World"e; rendered writer's block as an apocalyptic affliction, Lazarus' centerpiece, "e;We Call Upon the Author"e;, keys in on the existential crisis of the 21st century scribe, who's duty-bound to educate the oblivious "e;idiot constituency"e; and "e;myxomatoid kids"e; while struggling to measure up to the greats. ("e;Berryman was the best! He wrote like wet papier-mâché!"e;) It's a hilarious song-- and all the funnier because this admission of inadequacy came in the midst of an exceedingly productive and audacious streak in Cave's already storied long career.

But for all the manic glee he takes in fashioning a hook out of a line like "e;Prolix! Prolix!/ Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix,"e; the song reveals the seriousness and discipline that Cave-- the rare songwriter who keeps regular office hours-- continues to apply to his craft. In the years that have passed since Lazarus, Cave has both rebooted and retired Grinderman and tenured resignation papers from his longest serving Bad Seed, Mick Harvey. But given his recent track record of perseverence in the face of change, there's good reason to believe this author still has lots of explaining to do.