Send "Nick Cave " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 The 1990s were very good to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Where the previous decade saw Cave successfully transition out of the Birthday Party's combustible punk toward a more urbane, theatrical brand of rock, the 90s elevated him to the realm of archetype and institution. He successfully party-crashed Hollywood and "Top of the Pops", all while the college-radio charts filled up with emergent artists-- PJ Harvey, Tindersticks, Afghan Whigs-- cut from the Bad Seeds' black-velvet cloth.The Bad Seeds' mid-90s pinnacle forms the basis of the latest round of Mute's excellent reissue series, which include vividly remastered versions of the original albums, along with a 5.1 surround sound mix, B-sides, official videos, and the latest installments of Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard's illuminating fan-testimonial documentaries, Do You Love Me Like I Love You? The title of the film series is taken from the two-part song that opens and closes Let Love In, an authoritative show of force that was perfectly timed for the Bad Seeds' insurrectionary appearance on the 1994 Lollapalooza tour. The Bad Seeds had always traded in high drama and dissonance, but never before had they sounded this imposingly heavy-- the lecherous intimations of "Do You Love Me?" explode into a torrent of chain-gang vocals and drummer Thomas Wydler's machine-gunned snare rolls, while "Loverman" triggers its quiet-to-loud eruptions so masterfully, Metallica would later cover the song to the surprise of no one. But amid Let Love In's ballast, you can hear Cave's increased adeptness at exploring his fascinations using sly, pitch-black humor instead of transgressive shock tactics. "Red Right Hand"-- the future theme song of the Scream film franchise-- sets its serial-killer narrative to a seductive swampy groove, and the beautiful piano ballad "Nobody's Baby Now" is a work of such wry, understated elegance, Cave originally thought of giving it to Johnny Cash....full text |
| Adequacy |
| Having spent the bulk of the past year indulging guttural libido and swamp-rock urges with his Grinderman side-project, Nick Cave is reportedly back at the ‘day-job’ in preparation for a new regular long-player with the full Bad Seeds line-up. So whilst he knuckles down to write his next musical chapter, here comes another window of opportunity to sneak out another four older albums in deluxe DVD-appended form; this time covering the exceedingly creative and eclectic third quarter of The Bad Seeds-backed phase of his career to date. Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Let Love In Picking up pretty much where 1992’s raw, vicious and occasionally romantic Henry’s Dream left off, 1994’s Let Love In documents the post-1980s Bad Seeds line-up at its most self-assured and democratic. Vivid and kaleidoscopic in its reach, with some of Cave’s most enduring standards encased within a variety of musical settings, Let Love In has pretty much everything you could need from a Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds long-player… and then some. From lustful and stormy voodoo swagger (“Do You Love Me?” and “Loverman”), to cinematic biblically-slanted storytelling (“Red Right Hand”), via blood-splattering barroom brawling (“Thirsty Dog” and “Jangling Jack”), through self-deprecating black humour (“Lay Me Low” and “I Let Love In”), inside unpretentious almost crooner-friendly balladry (“Nobody’s Baby Now”) and spine-tingling atmospheric melancholy (“Do You Love Me? (Part 2)” and “Ain’t Gonna Rain Anymore”), what the album sometimes lacks in subtlety it makes up for in superbly-directed wide-screen theatrics. All in all, Let Love In is still a near-peerless collection for those looking for the most representative pinnacle of the strongest incarnation of The Bad Seeds so far. Notable DVD extras: Aside from another talking heads documentary film, richly-picked period B-sides abound, with the mournful “Sail Away” and the wickedly hilarious “(I’ll Love You) Till The End Of The World” being the most essential selections. Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads Although die-hard followers may have baulked at a Kylie Minogue duet yielding Cave his first bona fide ‘hit’ – with “Where The Wild Roses Grow” – it did at least finally open up his audience way beyond previously confining ghettos. Whilst its parent album, 1996’s Murder Ballads, isn’t a classic collection, being a tad too weighed-down by its death-centric conceptualism and its vast array of extra accomplices, it is however one of the most musically ambitious and – believe it or not – funniest albums in the Cave/Bad Seeds catalogue. Crucially, it’s the ribald wit-drenched pieces – that contribute the most to the record’s 64 person body count – which have stood the tests of time the most. Thus, the unrepentantly offensive sick-funk revision on the traditional “Stagger Lee” is far more enjoyable than the dour PJ Harvey-guesting “Henry Lee” and the near-dainty “The Kindness of Strangers” is outdone by the warped tale of a psychotic teenage serial killer that is “The Curse Of Millhaven.” Stylistically, the Bad Seeds flex muscles throughout that other bands simply don’t have; giving an ethereal train-tunnel groove to the stunning “Lovely Creature,” a twangy-jazz setting to “Crow Jane” and all sorts of improvised postures for the strangely infectious 14 or so minutes of the exhausting “O’Malley’s Bar.” It may not be a long-player for those with a prudish aversion to cartoon violence and twisted imaginations, but Murder Ballads remains a peculiar triumph in Cave’s convoluted body of work and provides a solid conclusion to his storyteller years....full text |
| Myspace |
| The 1990s were very good to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Where the previous decade saw Cave successfully transition out of the Birthday Party's combustible punk toward a more urbane, theatrical brand of rock, the 90s elevated him to the realm of archetype and institution. He successfully party-crashed Hollywood and "Top of the Pops", all while the college-radio charts filled up with emergent artists-- PJ Harvey, Tindersticks, Afghan Whigs-- cut from the Bad Seeds' black-velvet cloth. The Bad Seeds' mid-90s pinnacle forms the basis of the latest round of Mute's excellent reissue series, which include vividly remastered versions of the original albums, along with a 5.1 surround sound mix, B-sides, official videos, and the latest installments of Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard's illuminating fan-testimonial documentaries, Do You Love Me Like I Love You?...full text |
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