There were five studios albums released by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in the 90s, the decade I’ve long regarded as their golden era. So, rather self-indulgently, I’m proposing an ICA covering that particular time in history, but to be even more self-indulgent I’m restricting it to the three albums released between 1992 and 1996. Hear me out….
The Good Son, released in April 1990, has been put to one side for the reason that it was recorded in 1989. And when it came to The Boatman’s Call, recorded in the summer of 1996 and released in March 1997, I felt that it was too akin to a Nick Cave solo album, with quite a minimal involvement from his bandmates, and so it has been left alone.
What now follows are songs from Henry’s Dream (recorded in late 1991 and released in April 1992), Let Love In (recorded in late 1993 and released in April 1994) and Murder Ballads (recorded in stages over a two-year period between 1993 and 1995 and released in February 1996).
As I said earlier, I regard this as the golden era of the band. The music, for the most part, was loud and aggressive, and the storytelling via Cave’s lyrics often bordered on the extraordinary. It was also an era when the band’s membership fully stabilised, which I’m sure was a major factor in the consistent quality of these three albums. It hasn’t been the easiest task to narrow things down from the twenty-nine available – and it might have been even harder if I’d leaned into the b-sides from the singles – and indeed, as with many of my ICAs, the end product isn’t necessarily my favourite songs, but something which I think hangs well together over two imaginary sides of vinyl.
Side 1
1. Red Right Hand (from Let Love In)
Given the explosion in Nick Cave’s popularity over the past decade or so, it makes sense to open proceedings with the song, nay let’s elevate that to anthem, that he’s probably best-known for thanks to its use as the theme to the hit TV series Peaky Blinders.
It is incredibly difficult nowadays to hear Red Right Hand and not think of the character Tommy Shelby, particularly if anyone is relatively new to the band. But I always, in my head, go back to a television performance from just a matter of weeks after the album had been released. I’ve long said that mid-90s Bad Seeds were the greatest live act of the time. I’d call on this footage as my first piece of evidence. Sparse and hypnotic.
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2. Jack The Ripper (from Henry’s Dream)
In which I offer a poser to the TVV cognoscenti………
Is this a straightforward lyric in which the male protagonist is on the receiving end of domestic abuse within an unhealthy and toxic relationship?
Or….has Nick Cave’s imagination run riot and the tale is actually that of the infamous Jack the Ripper who, in trying to commit his latest atrocity is shocked that his latest victim is hitting back at him having realised what is actually happening?
I thought of the latter a year or so ago, after going on a guided walking tour of the east end of London where all the murders took place, where the aim of was not to glorify the killer, or indeed try to offer up any suggestion as to who he might have been, but instead to focus on the victims and the social/economic realities that led them to put themselves in dangerous situations.
‘She screams I’m Jack The Ripper every time I try to give that girl a kiss’.
It was the use of ‘that’ in such an impersonal way which made me think there was more to this one than I’d ever previously considered over the decades….there’s also the fact that the lyric is sung in such a menacing fashion rather than by someone who spends their time cowering in fear.
Either way, it’s a helluva tune.
3. I Let Love In (from Let Love In)
I devour rock biographies/autobiographies, and there is always, without fail, a part of the book where the author mulls over the pain and anguish, not forgetting huge amounts of time, it can take to come up with a song. This was far from the case for the title track of the 1994 album, with Mick Harvey later revealing how it came close to not being included:-
“Nick wrote this in five minutes, but he didn’t feel any relationship with it, like it wasn’t important to him because he hadn’t had to struggle with it or something. It was the Bad Seeds who insisted we record it.”
It’s not the most complicated song ever penned, but it is quite hard to imagine the album without it. Also makes for a nice change in tempo and mood on this ICA.
4. Henry Lee (from Murder Ballads)
The CD copy of Murder Ballads came with an illustrated booklet with accompanying lyrics. It was intriguing to learn that the words of this haunting balled were attributed to ‘Traditional/Cave’ and the music to ‘Cave’, and in a pre-internet age, it was nigh on impossible to find out much more.
Nick Cave, a few years later said “This song is an old Scottish murder ballad that I read in a book somewhere and played around with. It’s, um, a story about the fury of a scorned woman.” The old ballad was Young Hunting, an 18th century folk song, with the name of the original composer being long ago lost in the midst of time.
One of the interesting things in Cave’s take on it is we never learn the fate of the female who kills Henry Lee and disposes of his body down a deep well. The original folk song has her confess to the crime after the body is discovered, not in a well but in a river, and she is then burned at the stake.
5. The Curse Of Millhaven (from Murder Ballads)
There’s no doubt that Henry Lee is a ballad, and that it deal with a singular death. The Curse of Millhaven, long held up by Mrs Villain (aka Rachel) as her all-time favourite Bad Seeds song, is an entirely different kettle of fish.
A frantic, polka-style tune set in a town whose residents feel is cursed thanks to all sorts of tragedies and unsolved deaths that had befallen it. Turns out that it’s not actually a curse at the heart of the matter, but the behaviour of green-eyed, yellow-haired 15-year-old girl by the name of Loretta (although she prefers to be referred to as Lottie). She is only found out after causing what was at least 24 deaths in her home town, and the second half of the song, in which she celebrates her ‘achievements’ and her confinement to a mental hospital with real glee, is packed with dark humour and laugh out loud lyrics.
Oh, and while Lottie accepted her fate quite willingly, she was at great pains to point out that she wasn’t guilty of everything she had been accused of. She was no dog-killer…that was the work of ‘two junior high school psychos’.
Bonkers and brilliant in equal measures. The live rendition of the song at Glasgow Barrowlands as the second encore back in May 2001 will always be one of mine and Rachel’s greatest collective musical memories.
Side 2
1. Papa Won’t Leave You Henry (from Henry’s Dream)
By all accounts, this one was partly inspired by Nick Cave becoming a father for the first time in 1991. The lyrics of the chorus might think you’re in for a lovely lullaby:
Papa won’t leave you, Henry
Papa won’t leave you, Boy
Papa won’t leave you, Henry
Papa won’t leave you, Boy
Well, the road is long
And the road is hard
And many fall by the side
But Papa won’t leave you, Henry
So there ain’t no need to cry
Think again. The verses are straight out of a horror story…another that’s the stuff of nightmares rather than being rooted in any sort of reality. Were you aware that Nick Cave took a lot of drugs back in the day?
2. I Had A Dream, Joe (from Henry’s Dream)
A dream populated by foaming mouths, shadowy god-like creatures, needles piercing skin and menacing threats. If this is the stuff of Nick Cave’s dreams, I’d hate to imagine his nightmares.
This one’s rollicking punk-like tune would more or less be brought back for Thirsty Dog on Let Love In.
3. O’Malley’s Bar (from Murder Ballads)
The previous album may have seen Nick happy enough to let love in, but the tall, handsome and wholly narcistic individual who narrates this song should most certainly not have been allowed to cross the threshold of the public house owned by Mr O’Malley. Fourteen plus minutes of mayhem during which the bar owner, his wife and daughter, along with every customer, are mowed down in cold blood before the cops arrive to take the assailant away. And as with Lottie over in Millhaven, no remorse is shown.
4. Lay Me Low (from Let Love In)
Murder Ballads was an album a long time in the making, and indeed some of its songs had been written and worked on while Henry’s Dream and Let Love In were being realised, so I guess the concept of such an album was in Nick Cave’s head for quite a while.
I do wonder whether, if enough songs of quality had been written, Lay Me Low could have been held back and closed Murder Ballads. In saying that , the cover of Death Is Not The End does make for a fine ending, and uniquely for that album, it is a song where no murders actually take place. If it had been Lay Me Low, the justification could be that the man being entombed was a killer.
Just a thought.
So there you have it, nine songs, three from each album. But with one of them being more than fourteen minutes long, then I don’t think anyone has been shortchanged.
Happy Halloween.
