The Vault: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

March 2005, 3:15am.

Once again, I’ve left my university coursework to the last minute, resulting in yet another late night surrounded by text books and Tesco energy drinks. As the final paragraph is typed, the read-through begins, Mr. Sandmans voice whispers into my ear “Sleep is good, you should sleep” to which I reply “No time to sleep good sir”. I search for options to stave off my slumber, but with my housemates asleep and my stereo broken, I turn to TV to keep my eyelids from falling.

I surf the channels until I get to Channel 4 where a concert appears to be starting, “perfect…” I think, “This will do enough to keep me awake but not distract me from completing this work”

How wrong I was.

The stage is blue and the crowd is hushed, a tall man dressed in black is stalking the stage. He lifts the microphone to his lips and out comes the low growl of a man on the edge before the accompanying band presents the soundtrack to his torment.

The band was Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the venue was The Paradiso in Amsterdam and my night would be lost amongst the awe that washed over me for the following hour.

Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, formed from the ashes of The Birthday Party and with a career still going strong 28 years later, this is a band that don’t believe in doing things by halves; be it the music or in the drugs that threatened the very existence of the band. They are the soundtrack to your first love, your first big mistake, the first time you take a mans life and the last time you draw a breath.

With a career spanning as long as it has, it can be daunting for those wanting to see what it is about the band that gains such love from a collection of the most loyal fans in the world, 1994’s Let Love In provides the answer to that problem.

The raw quality of their previous efforts was refined into a hybrid of the soulful and the sociopathic, with tales of love and loss sitting alongside murder and chaos, Let Love In provides a panoramic picture of the bands career.

On tracks such as ‘Nobody’s Baby Now’ and ‘I Let Love In’, a new sense for the classic love song comes in to play, with Nick Cave at his vocal best, gone are the brash tones heard in Your Funeral…My Trial and instead replaced them with a soulful croon, but this isn’t the record where the band decided to go soft, god no.

Heavy enough that Metallica tried (and failed) at doing it justice, ‘Loverman’ finds Cave at his most sadistic as he spits and weaves a tale of lust and vengeance whilst Blixa Bargeld and Mick Harvey pummel their instruments in the background. Providing a stark contrast to ‘Nobody’s Baby Now’, ‘Loverman’ proved that you can be heavy without having to drop your guitar tone, you can shock without swearing and you can disturb without painting a vivid picture. Both exhilarating and unsettling, the track has remained a fan favourite and even managed to break into the top 100 in the UK singles charts.

Sitting smack bang in the middle of Let Love In sits a song that you will all know and some of you may even love, a song that tends to be an outsiders gateway into the underworld of the Bad Seeds.

‘Red Right Hand‘ peaked at 68 in the UK, but its fame really came through the popular horror franchise Scream, with the track taking on a life as the unofficial theme to the series. Based on ‘Paradise Lost’ by John Milton, the song (and by proxy, the book) refers to the vengeful hand of God and has since been covered by variety of acts from The Arctic Monkeys to Pete Yorn, who provided a cut for the ‘Hellboy’ soundtrack.

Considering the length of time and the amount of albums released, it’s a hard task to pick a duff album with a band as consistent as The Bad Seeds. Having spent most of the late 90’s battling heroin and alcohol addiction, 2001’s No More Shall We Part wasn’t the barnstormer fans had come to expect from the band. By no means is it a bad record, songs such as the title track and ‘Hallelujah’ retain so many of The Bad Seeds tropes, but listened to as a whole, it doesn’t seem to sparkle in the same way as Let Love In or The Firstborn is Dead do.

Whilst the most recent focus has gone towards Cave and Ellis’ other act, the garage rock of Grinderman, the Bad Seeds were by no means a spent force.

Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! found a band re-invigorated by taking a step back with other musical interests. Work on soundtracks such as The Proposition (which Cave had also written) as well as in the aforementioned Grinderman, gave the band a swagger and energy not seen since Murder Ballads and worked as a welcome antidote to the fantastic but incredibly sombre Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus; the album went silver in the UK, hitting the number 4 spot on the album charts whilst also receiving significant critical acclaim.

Whilst their influence isn’t as heavy handed as most bands, the lasting effect of the Bad Seeds and their approach to their craft can be heard through several modern artists. Be it the narrative structure and approach to myth and religion often heard in modern metal acts such as Mastodon and Black Breath, or maybe in the baritone vocal delivery that echoes through The National’s Matt Berninger, the touch of The Bad Seeds can be found across many genres.