Goth-punk musician, artist, storyteller: Nick Cave is all of them, yet remains an enigma. His band The Bad Seeds have been together since 1983, with Wild God their 18th and latest studio album; an attendant tour brings the group to Cardiff in early November. Teresa Delfino has chosen five songs from The Bad Seeds’ catalogue to help you solve this puzzle.
1. The Mercy Seat
Featured on 1988’s Tender Prey album and cited as Nick Cave’s most-performed song – widely considered one of his best, too – The Mercy Seat emerged from the Bad Seeds’ Berlin period. As choirboy in his youth, religion and music were a leading dyad of Cave’s upbringing; in adulthood, faith and the teachings of the Bible were fertile grounds to explore the philosophical questions underpinning his creativity. Good and evil were a dichotomy to be tested, challenged and resisted. In The Mercy Seat, the biblical allegory of punishment and judgement is evocative and shrouded in ambiguity, with Blixa Bargeld’s roiling guitar and strings accompanied by Mick Harvey’s looping bass. Cave’s hero Johnny Cash covered it on his American III album in 2000.
2. Ghosteen
In 2015, Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur died after falling from a cliff in Brighton. Ghosteen, released four years later, was the first Bad Seeds album since this loss. Its 12-minute title track’s swathing strings and confessional words are each delivered with intent, and to beautifully melancholic effect. At one point, Cave describes a Goldilocks-esque fairytale – “Mama bear holds the remote / Papa bear he just floats / And baby bear, he has gone / To the moon in a boat / On a boat” – and we are captured in his longing nostalgia. Ghosteen is Cave’s total surrender to grief: it is the creativity that bloomed in unimaginable tragedy, hope bearing clipped wings.
3. Into My Arms
Nick Cave has a transcendent talent for capturing the blemished underbelly of love. Exultation and acclaim, rage, eroticism and abandonment can all rouse the composition of a love ballad for this songwriter. The 10th Bad Seeds album, 1997’s The Boatman’s Call, addresses the spiritual search he endures in respect of the death of his father, when Cave was 19, and the breakdown of his relationships with PJ Harvey and Viviane Carneiro, mother of Cave’s son Luke. Album opener Into My Arms was scribbled down after attending church while trying to kick a heroin addiction, is a powerful articulation of Cave’s troubles. While the melody induces heartache, its lyrics endorse suffering: performed live, the sentiment rings true.
4. Jubilee Street
No stranger to morally enigmatic subjects, Cave tells a story of a prostitute from the perspective of a man who frequents her in the red-light district. Slow and brooding, Warren Ellis’ guitar melody then transforms in the latter half of the song to coincide with the revelations the narrator has: while knowing his behaviour is wrong, he’s never felt more alive (“I’m transforming / I’m vibrating / I’m glowing / I’m flying”). As the song peaks in catharsis, it’s made for a powerful moment in Cave’s live shows since the release of Jubilee Street’s accompanying album Push The Sky Away in 2013.
5. Your Funeral… My Trial
This elliptical track, from a 1986 album of the same name, is another for fans of Cave’s ability to shapeshift words and obscure meaning. Double entendre and occult language make decoding it a tasking venture, yet regardless of absolutes, there is an unshakable essence of despair and melancholy which renders truth unnecessary for this song. Its poetic lyricism alludes to a ballad of murder and shame, almost confessional in nature. Performed live, the piano and strings only further mystify the words, making for an otherworldly experience.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Utilita Arena Cardiff, Wed 6 Nov.
Tickets: £69.25-£128.40. Info: here
words TERESA DELFINO
