Review:

on 2012-01-11 CharlesMartel Said:

I confess to a near heretical view. I have never been a great fan of Nick Caves work. Right back when he was with the Birthday Party, I found his stuff to lack a certain quality which I always looked for in music. As his career has developed, I have often delved into his work and then retreated, finding therein little which appealed to me. These days, he seems much more like a spent force, and his work lacks even the innovation which characterised his early years. With Grinderman he may have gone back to a form of pure garage rock, but even that I find somewhat lacking.

"Dig Lazarus Dig" probably shows up the fact that Cave is now more a musical spent force than anything else. Whatever his creative juices may have been in the past, they are no longer showing here. Perhaps that is why he has resorted to sporting a quite ridiculous moustache. This album demonstrates more clearly than any other the fact that he has apparently nothing left to say and no musical frontier he wishes to challenge. "Dig Lazarus Dig" is replete with sloppy ballads in a conventional rock format, far from the experimentation and innovation of his younger days. He seems to speak lyrics these days and sing less - perhaps his voice has gone - and to cap it all, he sounds almost happy. Now that is a climb down for Nick Cave.

I hate to say it, but Cave should have packed it all in years ago and rested on whatever laurels he had managed to gather throughout his career. Gradually, he is losing any respect I ever had for him, even though I did not care much for his music. The present incarnation of the Bad Seeds is not up to the mark. His sound has become the sort of middle of the road rock music which he would have disdained fifteen or even ten years ago. Some of the songs on "Dig Lazarus Dig" display a futile effort at recapturing past glories. "Jesus of the Moon" is quite frankly awful, lacking melody and any sense of inspiration. "Midnight Man" could almost be thought of as a parody of bog-standard heavy metal if it were not so obviously an attempt to move into a new direction.

Cave has undoubtedly changed as a man. His long addiction to heroin is over and, though I am disgusted at myself for saying it, seems to have taken his creative spark with him. Once a man who stood out amongst his contemporaries, he has now become your average 52 year old: woolly sweaters and cocoa by the fireplace. Time to retire.
Rating: 3/10

on 2008-05-23 dscanland Said:

Ah, your Nick Cave love is just beginning. Check out Murder Ballads or Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus to get the full effect.
Not Rated