Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Lazarus, go back to your ‘Cave’

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds once again salutes their worldwide fanbase with their 14th studio album “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!”. The Australian “prince of darkness” and his musician friends “Bad Seeds”, who went to a beauty sleep with their 2004 album "Abattoir Blues", have woken up with Lazarus.

The musical journey of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds began in 1984 with their "From Her to Eternity" album. The band reached the zenith of their career with “Henry’s Dream” (1992), “Let Love In" (1994), "Murder Ballads" (1996) and "The Boatman's Call" (1997) and then decided to chill out with “No More Shall We Part” (2001) as the piano began to overshadow the guitars.
Nevertheless, the new album, which takes its name after the story of the resurrection of Lazarus told in the Bible, witnesses the return of the hard rock sound which was de-emphasized by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in recent years. Built on a strong rock infrastructure, the album is full of screeching, weird and suspensful melodies.

Lazarus, I want you to dig
Cave, who loves telling gothic and crime stories in his songs, frequently refers to such dark themes as sin, revenge, repent, and guilt, often inspired by Biblical stories. It is therefore safe to say that “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!”, the song which gave the album its title, is a typical Nick Cave song.
The resurrection of Lazarus is one of the most interesting Biblical stories. According to the Gospel of John, Lazarus had been dead and in the tomb for four days, but was resurrected by Jesus who had the stone rolled away from the tomb and bade Lazarus to come out.
"The resurrection of Lazarus" deeply affected Nick Cave: “Ever since I can remember hearing the Lazarus story, when I was a kid, you know, back in church, I was disturbed and worried by it. Traumatized, actually. We are all, of course, in awe of the greatest of Christ's miracles - raising a man from the dead - but I couldn't help but wonder how Lazarus felt about it. As a child it gave me the creeps, to be honest. I've taken Lazarus and stuck him in New York City, in order to give the song, a hip, contemporary feel.”
The song rolls on with the chorus “Laz’rus dig yourself” accompanied by guitar riffs that sounds like asphalt diggers digging into our brains.

In praise of loneliness
The song alludes to the fact that we do not know what awaits us after death. The high tempo of the first song carries us to "Today's Lesson" in which Mr. Sandman, the starring actor of naive children tales, is given by Cave a nasty role in a gothic sexual fantasy.
With “Moonland”, we slow down and wander in a snowy and starry night accompanied by drums. After this blues song obviously written in praise of loneliness, we once again enter a mysterious world: “Night of the Lotus Eaters”. Performed along the fine line between “disturbing” and “peaceful”, the bass guitar and the echoing sound of an electric guitar make us feel in our bones the mystery of this song.
“Albert Goes West” brings us into the already conquered territory of punk and we feel relieved. This song feels like a simulacrum of Moonland. Snow is replaced with sun, but the praise of loneliness remains with a single difference. This is not a melancholic blues song, but a fervent punk song.

How to write a love song?
In “We Call Upon the Author to Explain” the dark poet of Australia greets the underdog. Cave gives us two examples: Charles Bukowski and John Berryman. Out of these two alcoholic poets, Cave prefers Berryman who followed his father’s example and committed suicide. Cave also cannot help but mention another suicidal man, the famous American writer Hemingway.
With “Hold On to Yourself”, Cave explores the terrain of love ballad the rules of which he knows by heart. We are talking about a poet who gave a lecture on “How to write a long song?” at Vienna Poem Festival. Yet Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds immediately disrupts the melancholy of this ballad by a powerful antidote: “Lie Down Here (And Be My Girl)", a song that tells a story about the ebb and flow of love. The screeching guitar is accompanied by deceivingly comforting piano tunes, and that familiar voice reflects on the hopeful dream of mending a broken love.
After this booming song comes another love ballad powered by violin and piano: “Jesus of the Moon”. The sorrow that emanates from the St. James Hotel enfolds wherever this song is played. In this song, another familiar hero of Nick Cave songs fears that his life will stay the same for ever and escapes. "People often talk about being scared of change / But for me I'm more afraid of things staying the same / 'Cause the game is never won / By standing in any one place / For too long”…
“Midnight Man”, filled with tambourine and complicated, irregular organ tunes, tells the story of a secret heroine who looks for the eternal love of her life in a series of one night stands...

More News From Nowhere...
The final song of the album, "More News From Nowhere" takes its name after an utopic socialist novel written in 1890 by William Morris. In this novel, Morris claimed that socialism must abolish not only private property, but also the division between daily life, work, and art. Nick Cave reconstructs this utopian world of Morris in order to settle old scores with his own past.
The old loves of Nick Cave parade through the song, two of which being well-known figures: Polly Jean Harvey and Deanna.
Cave psychoanalyzes himself through the women of his life and explain his feelings with these lines: “And don't it make you feel so sad / Don't the blood rush to your feet / To think that everything you do today / Tomorrow is obsolete / Technology and women / And little children too / Don't it make you feel blue?”
And calmly, “Well I gotta say / Yeah I gotta say / Goodbye / Goodbye / Goodbye”, says Nick Cave, after 53 minutes 35 seconds of great music... Does he say goodbye to us, to his women, or to a regretful past? We do not know... Thanks to him we can curse this wearisome world that did not even leave Lazarus alone in his tomb...

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