Public Servant Lifestyle

Recorded in just seven days with Birthday Party producer Nick Launay, the latest Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds album is a bit of an epic...

Nocturama

The ten blistering tracks that make up the latest release from Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - the follow up to 2001's brilliant No More Shall We Part - is, astonishingly, the twelfth studio album from the band.

Nocturama combines the gracefulness and nakedness of No More Shall We Part and its predecessor The Boatman's Call with the sinuous energy of earlier works. Recorded in just seven days, the album displays a renewed strength of purpose within the band, and is marked by an immediacy of recording technique and a distinct thematic diversity.

Birthday Party

LA based British producer Nick Launay who worked on the album is perhaps best known for his work with John Lydon’s PiL, Talking Heads, Gang of Four and The Slits, but he is no stranger to a couple of the 'Seeds. He first worked with Nick Cave and Mick Harvey when he produced The Birthday Party's classic 1981 single, Release the Bats.

His input to the Nocturama sessions brought out the power and energy in the band, exploiting the combustible potential and diverse talent (almost all of them front their own bands outside the group) of the musicians.

The band's sheer pleasure in playing together built on the intention to loosen up the process and Nocturama emerged with rawness in both the driven and the gentle songs.

Listened to as a complete album from start to finish, Nocturama presents a heady mix, spanning emotional surrender and venomous black humour, engaging all the while in a wide range of themes and moods.

There's a tender sunset song of hope; an elegant piano song of longing; a yawing, dark violin waltz; a swaggering pledge of love; a raucous abominable tale; a sorrowful evocation of loss; a nostalgic meditation; a fragrant love epiphany; and one final, lustful demonic epic. Some of the loveliest, most compelling songs are the gentle ones like the opening Wonderful Life, or the simple rendering of nostalgia in There Is a Town.

Lounge Noir

The recent single Bring It On sees the band hitting a bold, superfly noir groove and features an outstanding duetted vocal from Chris Bailey, formerly the singer with Brisbane's glorious pre-punk nihilists The Saints. Then track Dead Man in My Bed further raises the noise levels as Nick Cave takes the perspective of a woman afflicted with a useless partner.

The album's most spectacular song is saved until the end (on the vinyl occupying a whole side of the one-sided second record) when The Bad Seeds unleash the flaming, fifteen minute epic, Babe, I'm On Fire.

Recorded in early 2002 at SingSing studios in Melbourne by The Bad Seeds current line up: Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld, Thomas Wydler, Martyn Casey, Conway Savage, Jim Sclavunos and Warren Ellis, the album was produced by the band themselves, as well as by Nick Launay and mixed at Olympic Studios in London.

Nocturama might well turn out to be the best introduction yet to the complete Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds panorama.

Prolific

As well as a number of (pre-'Bad Seeds) Birthday Party albums - including an excellent collection of BBC sessions released on CD by BBC Music - the complete album back catalogue of the band is all still available. The Firstborn Is Dead, From Her To Eternity, Henry's Dream, Kicking Against The Pricks, Let Love In, Live Seeds, Murder Ballads (featuring PJ Harvey and Kylie Minogue, among other guest vocalists), No More Shall We Part, Tender Prey, The Boatman's Call, The Good Son and Your Funeral, My Trial are all still available from Mute.

A compilation album - The Best Of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, has also been released on the same label, as have a companion video collection, tour documentary (The Road to God Knows Where) and live concert tape (Live at The Paradiso).

For more information on all things to do with the Bad Seeds visit the offical website: www.nickcaveandthebadseeds.com

See also on Lifestyle: The Stickability Factor - Nottingham’s Tindersticks are busy reinventing themselves with their latest album.

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Nocturama is available as a double LP, regular CD and limited edition CD which includes a bonus DVD featuring the 15 minute epic video for Babe, I'm On Fire. A single, an edited version of Bring It On, has also just been released, all on the Mute label.

Picture credit: Sam Barker

PSP Ltd is not responsible for the contents of external websites.

More information available in Music