Thank Satan for Nick Cave

Nick Cave is less a musician than a character.  Like Tom Waits, there is more a character behind the music in the beginning than a man built atop of the sound.  Today, four of his albums were reissued.  The Australian is no stranger to projects:

- The Boys Next Door

- The Birthday Party

- The Bad Seeds

- Grinderman

But what he is a stranger to is typical pop music.  This isn't nice, this isn't clean.  Cave's gaunt, cathedralic sound was developed by his swan-songers the Bad Seeds.  Aptly named Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds they would go onto to record the core of his discography.  Ringing in at 14 albums and still going, Cave's legacy is one of darkness.  In 1973, the Boys Next Door became the Birthday Party and for a decade they would eek out morbid sounding off-pop embracing the likes of Lou Reed, Roxy Music, and Bowie.  A decade later Cave and guitarist Mick Harvey would begin the Bad Seeds

The Bad Seeds were a natural extension of Cave's sound, no longer could he stay in the shadows of post-punk, he branched outward.  Clad like Robber-Barons who belong in a massive, empty saloon fueled by nothing but mystical alcoholic spirts, the Seeds stand alone in the music spectrum.  Their first four albums,From Her to Eternity, The Firstborn is Dead, the cover album Kicking the Pricks, and Your Funeral, My Trial were the Seeds approaching and nesting into their sound which would bud into 1988s Tender Prey.

In terms of the reissues, Cave's first four have been re-released so far.  Eternity and Firstborn both have the Seeds wandering through the fringes of darkness to find a sound.  Cave's commanding, deadly voice wraps around the rhythmic rather uniquely.  He also does more than just sing, he uses his voice as a dimmer to create a darker or less-dark feeling, for there rarely is light.

Pricks has them slicing into their various influences and developing the likes of bluegrass, country, the blues, and early rock and roll.  The Velvet Underground's All Tommorow's Parties is on the cut also, with Cave and his ghastly chorus echoing the melancholic crooning of Nico.  However, on Funeral, Cave's heroin addiction and sound is coming to fruition.  The Seeds instrumentation is vast here, tracks like The Carny, Your Funeral, My Trial,  and Jack's Shadow allow them to explore their own niche they have cleared out and scared all other musical life away.

Tender Prey will knock your socks off...and it should be coming soon enough.