50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: from #9 to #5

Right into the very last few tracks. the one and only rule I did make from this list was to not include anything from The Best Of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds compilation album (which I didn't break) but now into the last ten songs, all (except two tracks in the next post) are just from the Bad Seeds albums. So the next number is....

9. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Still In Love
Sorry, I can't help but include this track but I do know most hardcore Nick Cave fans totally dislike this album. This album reunited Nick Cave with Nick Launay who produced the "Release the Bats" single by The Birthday Party 20 years earlier and now has done everything since with him. Apparently Nick Launay said something like "you guys sound like old men on your death beds" which then Cave wrote "Dead Man In My Bed" in the studio quickly after. This song follows that on the album at the mid way point. I think it's one of the most amazing ballads he's every written. This albums main theme was to write about the middle period of love so not sad farewell and not the first blush but after being married for a few years like Cave himself. The intermediate part most singer-songwriters have ignored. This was also written and recorded live but he got rid of his piano after this album but if nothing else you've got to admit it was a transitional track and album.
Find it on: Nocturama (Album) 2003

8. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Breathless
Another beautifully, romantic track just like the last one which was written for his wife, Susie Bick. The last of his albums recorded and released almost two years apart. With Nocturama done March 2002 in Australia after a tour and out early February 2003 and the next one recorded around April 2004 in France, released at the end of September 2004. You can do the math but it looks like a bit of time in between albums to me. Now it seems he's desperate to record the next one even if he's just finished off the American tour and he hasn't written a word. Looking at the last three albums (plus that book) timeline, Grinderman released on March 5, 2007 and recorded in 2006 then Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! recorded June-July, 2007 then released on March 3, 2008 next came the dead bunny book, written on a Dig Larry tour bus and published in September 2009, audio-book was done at the same time as well. Recording of Grinderman 2 took from August 2008 to 2009 so it was completed a year after the original sessions. All were done in and around London as well. I'm not even including the soundtracks or scores from films and theater. He seems like an urgent, non-stop workaholic in last few years, like it's a race to the finish line.
Find it on: Breathless (Single) 2004 or Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (Album) 2004

7. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Watching Alice
The first of a few more bleak tunes, it might be a little unhealthy that I've chosen so many songs like these but it does give me, myself and I more understanding of what I like listening to. So after two of his most romantic tracks here's peeping Tom Nick Cave watching a girl called Alice getting dressed year after year but keeping this explanation shorter than the last two: what could be more depressing than watching a girl getting dressed?
Find it on: Tender Prey (Album) 1988

6. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere?
Well this is the third song from The Boatman's Call album which I said in the first post in this series of posts that it wasn't his best album but it's seems it's his second best well, tied for second but I haven't finished yet. Is this the saddest from that album? maybe one of them, with lyrics like: "Around the duck pond we grimly mope, Gloomily and mournfully we go round again, And one more doomed time and without much hope, Going round and around to nowhere" but at least you could watch and listen to the ducks, Nick. Quack!
Find it on: The Boatman's Call (Album) 1997

5. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Sad Waters
The very start of Your Funeral... My Trial album which seems like the album which is tied for third place if I add up all the songs and which albums they came from. Not totally giving away the next final top tracks from the next post but third place albums are 2003's Nocturama, 1994's Let Love In, 1988's Tender Prey, this album from 1986 as all the Bad Seeds albums plus the 1983's The Birthday Party's Mutiny/The Bad Seed. Anyway I think I'll stop now and keep this explanation short and sweet as well.
Find it on: Your Funeral... My Trial (Album) 1986

The top plus the bottom photo are by Polly Borland (again). With Susie Bick (left) with her husband Nick Cave (right) taken from around the year 2000. This one below is the only photo I can find of Susie and Nick together, kissing. A very small one:
Or here is the bigger one with writing all over the middle of the pic. It's obviously posed for her camera but it's sweet and it's titled "Marital Bliss" too.

Stay tuned for the very last post soon of these: my 50 favorite Nick Cave songs.

50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: from #34 to #30

Sorry it's been a little while since my last blog so I'm going to go straight into the next five songs and say nothing more about you know what because here it is anyway...

34. Grinderman - Palaces of Montezuma
Well, I was not going to include anything from this album but I'll admit this one is a really cool track. As for the the rest of the album it works better than the first Grinderman album and maybe just a little bit better than the last Bad Seeds album. I like the fact that there is only nine songs but it is longer overall than the debut album for 2007. With a killer rhythm section of Martyn P. Casey and Jim Sclavunos but the real star here is Warren Ellis all his mad sounds are amazing (you just wish the singer would shut-up) which leads into Cave's lyrics. What can I say about that other than it's a bit on the weak side but what can he possibly do now? I guess to be fair it's really not bad for someone who's going to be 53 years old next week. At around the same age Bob Dylan was releasing the horror of Knocked Out Loaded for his fans to enjoy so thank-god we don't have that just a different kind-of horror.
Find it on: Grinderman 2 (Album) 2010

33. Nick Cave and Warren Eills - Clean Hands, Dirty Hands
The first of three Traditional songs here on my list which I guess are kind-of covers too. The very last song from the first real Cave and Ellis only collaboration and still the best (couple of years before Grinderman). This track is more of a group or band with Martyn P. Casey playing bass, Jim White from Dirty Three playing drums and George Vjestica on guitar too. Just like his first novel in 1989 And the Ass Saw the Angel, The Proposition is one of his creative peaks. So that's his novel and film but what about his albums well, if I was only to pick one album a decade for the 80's it would be Your Funeral... My Trial, the 90's Henry's Dream and 2000's No More Shall We Part and for the Birthday Party it would have to be Mutiny/The Bad Seed which is just the last recordings of that band. Of course that is only my opinion which just like my charts here of his best songs. So it's not some higher authority but hopefully I do explain the reasons why, in someway.
Find it on: The Proposition (Soundtrack) 2005


32. Johnny Cash and Nick Cave - Cindy
The other song Cave sung with Johnny Cash. I love the album American IV: The Man Comes Around which this was a outtake from but this track is a totally wicked duet. Here Cave comes full circle, his earliest childhood memory in the late 60's, of music was sitting watching The Johnny Cash TV Show in country town Australia then skip to early 2000's and he's sitting waiting for Cash in a recording studio and to quote him "When Johnny arrived he looked very sick to me, very frail...then Johnny started to play and sing and he just turned into a different person - it was just this extraordinary thing to see. He came alive." and this up-tempo song proves that. It could be called another cover song so maybe I can't count too but it's a Traditional track which Cave picked to do. The lyrics in the chorus are "I'll marry you one day", which he did marry Susie Bick the year before this.
Find it on: Johnny Cash's Unearthed (Box-set) 2003

31. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Rye Whiskey
Yet another Traditional song which was recorded for the 1986 Kicking Against The Pricks album but somehow left-off for some mad reason and released in 1989 and again in 2005. I like this better than any of the previous covers that I've chosen before or after this which adds up to nine cover songs now. It's another drinking song too but I'm not a piss-head or anything, honest. Hugo Race plays guitar here and Tracy Pew plays bass too which will be one of his last times because by the end of year he would have passed away. I just adore the words for this track and when he sing "If the ocean was whiskey and I was a duck...but the ocean ain't whiskey and I ain't a duck" which if he wanted to give up his day job as a singer/songwriter I think he could still make a great duck. Maybe the Grinderman 3 album should have a duck on the front cover like this Pacific Black Duck. Can you imagine it first a monkey, then a wolf, next a duck with lyrics something like this: "Am I a duck or a man now, I can't tell anymore, quack, quack, quack!!!" They could all wear duck costumes in the video clip. I should say again I never really liked the promos videos for his singles which maybe is another reason for a list like this.
Find it on: B-Sides & Rarities (Compilation) 2005

30. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Wonderful Life
The opening song on the album almost every Nick Cave fan loves to hate. In the 90's he said he would love to make an album like Bob Dylan's Self Portrait which I think Nocturama would have to be the closest he's ever got to that. It's a very difficult album for fans to like which I understand but in the last couple of years I'm enjoying it more and more, is it a very, very, very slow grower like at a snails pace. It's Blixa Bargeld's last as a Bad Seeds member which now we know the details about this, well according to Cave. Bargeld turned up to recording with a Pedal Steel Guitar which he didn't know how to play but knew it's the instrument Cave hates and loathes and insisted on using it as his kind-off last stand because a little while after finishing the sessions for the album he just emailed Cave "It's over and I'm leaving". Nick had to ring him up to ask Blixa is he sure and why. Nick Cave then said at the time he was totally shocked and for a long time afterwards. Anyway it is a beautiful and wonderful way to start this album. Maybe give it another go and I'll give his new direction a fair chance too.
Find it on: Nocturama (Album) 2003

Top photo by Polly Borland from around 2002.

Plus I should thank you for reading it more often, so thank you again. Stay tuned for more...