Murder Ballads --- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds --- 1996 (Mute)
Disclaimer I: This is another of my original reviews from my old website, written at least fifteen years ago, probably longer, so bear with me if the writing style is not up to my usual standard.
Disclaimer II (Original): All the views, theories, interpretations and explanations offered in these reviews are my own. They do not necessarily reflect the views, meanings or symbolisation which may have been intended to have been conveyed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in these songs. I am making my own judgements, and in many cases guessing the meanings of songs, based on what I have heard and on what I have divined from the lyrics. If my ideas turn out to be completely incorrect or inaccurate, I apologise to the artiste and welcome any corrections and/or advice.
What can I say about this album that hasn't already been said? You either love it or you hate it (guess which side I fall on?). A unique album in many respects, such a thing has never been attempted before to my knowledge, a collection of original compositions as well as arrangements of traditional songs, all dealing with the subject of murder, and all handled with Nick Cave's usual flair and talent. Songs like the old rock standard Stagger Lee are given new life, with a lyric that you definitely wouldn't let your mother hear! In fact, taken on its own, Nick's version of Stagger Lee, the tale of a "Bad motherf
ucker" who by his own admission will "Crawl over fifty good pu
ssies /Just to get to one fat boy's as
shole" is at once staggering (no pun intended) and hilariously funny. You have to see beyond what seems gratuitious use of expletives and four-letter words, raw porn imagery and hysteria to realise that this song is crafted so well that you couldn't really take offence at it.
The instances of murder are all handled in various different and clever ways. The aforementioned Stagger Lee all but glorifies the drunk, psychotic protagonist, but then so, in a different way, does The Curse of Millhaven, in which an insane fifteen-year old girl (nice twist, Nick!) gloats about her multiple murders:
"Yes it is I, Lottie, the Curse of Millhaven/I've struck horror in the heart of this town". I defy the the loopy Lottie's parting comments to fail to raise a smile in even the most stony-faced puritan, as she gleefully declares
"They ask me if I feel remorse/And I answer Why of course!/There's so much more I could have done if they'd let me!" But in Song of Joy, the opening track, murder is treated in very much a different manner, with the narrator of the tale relating the horrifying story of the slaying of his wife and their three daughters, with the slowly-dawning realisation that he who speaks of his pain is perhaps more than he seems.
Then there is the ethereal, quite stunningly beautiful "Where the wild roses grow", which was selected (not surprisingly) as a single from the album. This song features Kylie Minogue in a wonderful duet with Cave, while violins, cellos and a full string section weave a tale of love, rescue and of course, in the end, murder. On this track Kylie shows the full breadth of her range: it's a pity that she has become identified with soulless pop ditties, seen by the world in general as a vacuous, empty sex symbol, and she should try to address this and redress a balance which, in my opinion, circumstance has cruelly tilted against her.
(Note: remember the disclaimer? This was written sometime in the late nineties I think... TH) Oh yes, and let's not forget O'Malley's Bar...
A crazy, blood-filled, gore-spattered tale of a man who walks into O'Malley's Bar, desperate for some recognition in his home town, and shoots dead everyone there. Well, apart from Jerry Bellows, who gets the distinction of receiving the attentions of the gunman with
"An ash-tray as big as a fucking really big brick/I split his skull in half"! As he glides through his dance of death, the gunman declares that he is not to blame, claiming that he is being controlled:
"My hand decided that the time had come/And for a moment it disappeared from view/When it returned it fairly burned/With confidence anew". Each shooting is described with loving care, almost like a good episode of Itchy and Scratchy: I particularly like the account of how he kills O'Malley's wife:
"I jammed the barrel under her chin/Her face looked raw and vicious/Her head it landed in the sink/With all the dirty dishes".
Cave admits that this is a humourous song, and shouldn't be taken too seriously, but the way it is played differentiates it, in my opinion, from the crazy, madcap Curse of Millhaven. In my view, if you want to simplify it to basics, the latter is the "funny" murder song, while the former is much more serious. We are shown the gunman's true colours in the end however, when, ready to blow his own head off, he chickens out, and comes out, hands above his head, shouting
"Don't shoot! I'm a man unarmed!"
The album ends with a stunning rendition of Bob Dylan's Death is not the end, with both PJ Harvey (who guests on the lovely "Henry Lee") and Kylie taking a verse, as well as the rest of the Bad Seeds, Shane McGowan and Anita Lane. To me, the effect of this last track is like sunshine after the rain, the calm after the storm: after the senseless slaughter of O'Malley's Bar, this song, for me, closes the album in fine style, with perhaps a message that those who have died in all the songs herein have gone on to better things: Death is not the end....
Produced by Nick and the Bad Seeds, and Tony Cohen and Victor Van Vugt, Murder ballads takes Cave's genius to new heights, and even though he may not have written all the tracks hereon (some are, as mentioned, reworkings of traditional songs), he has made every one of them forever his.
TRACKLISTING
1. Song of Joy
2. Stagger Lee
3. Henry Lee
4. Lovely creature
5. Where the wild roses grow
6. The Curse of Millhaven
7. The kindness of strangers
8. Crow Jane
9. O'Malley's Bar
10. Death is not the end