OTR: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - The Best of

Thus far the only "hits" compilation for Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (released on Reprise/Mute in 1998), The Best of is a good introduction for those unfamiliar with the group save for the fact that it is not sequenced chronologically. Apparently the producers felt it necessary to try and make it feel like a proper album, though if that were the goal, this is not how I would have arranged the songs. My guess? They stuck the abrasive avant-garde "From Her To Eternity" (the eponymous cut from their 1984 debut) as the closing track so as not to frighten away potential new fans. It's far better to suck people in with the upbeat, major-key "Deanna" (from Tender Prey - 1988) because most people don't pay close enough attention to lyrics to catch anything aside from "I'm out here for your soul."

I have to admit that I haven't dug into the Nick Cave (with or without the Bad Seeds) discography as I'd like to. The Best of is currently the only LP I own, though I've heard No More Shall We Part (released after this compilation) all of the way through courtesy of WAIH and internet radio stations filled in some of the many other gaps in my listening experience.

The first time I'd ever heard of Nick Cave was in the summer of 1995 when I heard his contribution to the Batman Forever soundtrack: "There is a Light." I thought the music to the song was great, but it struck me as odd and kind of goofy that a singer in the baritone range used the word "daddy-O" in his lyrics. Hindsight makes me suspect that this was a cast-off from Let Love In (1994); it certainly wouldn't have fit on Murder Ballads (1996).

The Best of would end up becoming one of the "sanity CDs" I would bring with me to my data entry temp job I worked at when I first moved to Pittsburgh. The office had streaming services, Flash and JavaScript all blocked, so internet radio was out of the question (along with most of the internet). We drones were allowed to bring in CDs or portable radios so long as we also brought our own set of headphones. Since our seats weren't assigned, all of these items had to be brought home and then back to the job every day. Like so many other aspects of temping, it was somewhat annoying.

Still, it was less annoying to be able to block everyone else out with Nick Cave than to have to listen to whatever else was going on in the office. In the group of temps I was sent to the office with, one of them was an irritating woman with a foghorn mouth. She was apparently unaware that the key word in the phrase "temp job" was the second of the two words as she would barely get any data entry done, attempting instead to try and snag her neighbours in the row into conversation. This particular assignment was during the holiday season and I remember this woman got all of the temps up in the block and led us all to the supervisor's cube. I followed the herd, thinking there was going to be a meeting. Instead, fogmouth presented the supervisor with a Christmas card and a present.

Not that this saved her from being the first person culled from the group once seasonal work began to ebb. Sucking up one day, gone the next - it was beautiful.

In removing myself from the conversational pool, I became quite well acquainted with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Best of. I can't say there is a bad song of the bunch of here. There are songs I like somewhat less than the others, but as for anything truly bad, it's not here.

To listen to Nick Cave is to expect stories. Even though only one album had the word "ballads" in the title it would have been accurate for all of them to be titled as such among varying themes. If "Tupelo," "The Carny" and "The Mercy Seat" were on the same original LP, it could have been called Fire and Brimstone Ballads. "The Mercy Seat" (covered hauntingly by Johnny Cash) is possibly Cave's most unsettling song, sung from the perspective of a death row prisoner being electrocuted, it's a gripping narrative of someone who lacks remorse for whatever deed got him into his current predicament yet is resigned to being violently thrust off the mortal coil regardless.

On the other side of coin are the love songs. "Do You Love Me?" is blunt and obsessive while "Into My Arms" is quietly yearning, with Cave singing to an "interventionist God" who he doesn't believe in but if he did he'd pray to direct the object of his affections his way. "The Ship Song" is the most passionate on this set, a rare carpe diem song which doesn't beg for a one night stand but instead offers the following persuasive argument: if you become my lover we will ascend to a higher plane together. While those are not even close to the actual lyrics, that is what is inferred in the way Cave sings it.

After From Her To Eternity, Nick Cave shed much of the in your face abrasiveness of his former band, The Birthday Party. However, he'd revisit some of that with his Grinderman project (which introduced itself to the world with "No Pussy Blues" and introduced the world to Nick Cave's moustache). Most of Nick Cave's work - with or without The Bad Seeds - is more subdued and subversive. Anyone listening to those early records by The Birthday Party may not be too shocked by "The Mercy Seat" or even "Do You Love Me?" but songs like "Nobody's Baby Now" and "The Ship Song" likely would come as a complete surprise.

Nick Cave didn't mellow out; he ascended to a higher plane of musical existence.