Nick Cave - The Boatman's Call

Nick Cave’s career has been a gradual calming down from an original position of incandescent rage. His work from then, whilst still dark and disturbing, was at least focused, certainly musically. Then gradually, more and more songs started to appear that weren’t really about evil at all. Some of them were even love songs. Admittedly they were Nick’s own brand of love song, tales about love in the midst’s of depravity and corruption, but still the change was clear. Now Nick is a husband and father and his latest album is not only devoid of his usual contempt for the world, but is actually lovely.

It is still easily recognisable as Nick Cave. Musically it is not dissimilar to The Good Son and Nick’s voice is unmistakable. The subject matter, however, consists mainly of reflective songs about love and even Christianity (although fortunately nothing too fanatical). Both of these are the subject of the album’s highlight, Into my arms. This is a beautiful song which sounds somewhere between a conventional hymn and a Negro spiritual.

Whilst listening to the album however, one is left with a nagging feeling that it would benefit from a few more dynamic sounding tracks such as grace the other Bad Seeds albums. Their absence may be due to the loss of Barry Adamson who is busy making fantastic albums of his own. Nonetheless the musical content is still all you would expect. It is mainly piano or organ based with the other instruments providing background texture.

Whilst not the best Bad Seeds album this is certainly a worthy addition to their cannon and fans of Nick Cave are unlikely to be disappointed by the new direction in which his music seems to be headed. It is just to be hoped that he can continue to keep the religious content of his albums at a manageable level. After all who would want an album by Harry Secombe and the Bad Seeds?...(8)

Jaco