Nick Cave - Henry's Dream [Remastered] CD Review (Mute)

Nick Cave's seventh studio album, Henry's Dream (1992), is the last of the current set of reissues. This sound of this album heads back toward the dark intensity of Tender Prey without giving up the acoustic sounds of The Good Son.

“Henry’s Dream,” explains Nick Cave, “was one of the first records that I came to with an absolute sound in my head as to how this record should be. What I wanted to make with Henry’s Dream was a very violent acoustic record, basically using storytelling and acoustic instruments to create a really fucked up and violent sound, but which was in no way heavy. This, sadly, didn’t happen” This comment aside, Henry's Dream was one of Cave's strongest release to date and roughly half of the songs on this disc ("Jack The Ripper", "I Had A Dream Joe", "Papa Won't Leave You Henry" and "Brother My Cup is Empty") are staples in the band's live set.





At the time, this was probably one the more polished Bad Seeds releases but this plays more into the band's evolving sound along with newcomer producer David Briggs (Neil Young) rather than the changes in line-up. Between The Good Son and Henry's Dream, Kid Congo had left the fold and the Bad Seeds added Conway Savage on piano and ex-Triffid Martyn Casey on bass.

Like the other reissues in this series, this release is a digi-pack with a bonus DVD. The tracks on the DVD are:

Henry's Dream album in 5:1

Extra tracks:
Blue Bird
Jack The Ripper (Acoustic version)
I Had a Dream Joe (Live)
The Good Son (Live)
The Mercy Seat (Live)
The Carny (Live)
The Ship Song (Live)

Videos: – also available for download to MP3/Ipod

Music videos:
I Had a Dream, Joe
Straight to You
Jack the Ripper (Acoustic Version)

"Do You Love Me Like I Love You": (Part 7: Henry's Dream)
Directed by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard

Links:
Nick Cave

Nick Cave - The Good Son [Remastered] CD Review (Mute)

Nick Cave's sixth album, The Good Son (1990), completed his transition into the mainstream. Cave forgoes the dark intensity of Tender Prey on this disc and the (almost) Southern gospel songs on this disc are powered by Cave's vocals accompanied by keyboards and strings. As Cave had discovered a new-found sobriety and had also found love with Brazilian stylist Viviane Carneiro, most of the songs on The Good Son are mid-tempo, piano-driven explorations of love and sorrow.

To set the stage for these recordings, Nick remained in São Paulo after the Tender Prey tour while the rest of the band returned to Berlin.

“I started to write a lot and I didn’t really go back; I just stayed in Brazil. A lot of stuff started to come quite quickly: ‘The Weeping Song’, ‘The Ship Song’, ‘Foi Na Cruz’ - these extremely sweet love songs appeared.” As it turned out, the songs from that period prefigure and hint at something that would henceforward become a Cave obsession: to write a kind of “classic” love song, a craft he would devote many years to fine honing.

It was during this period also that Nick really began to come to grips with the piano as a compositional tool. Although he’d had two years of piano lessons in his pre-teens and knew how to make a chord, for all practical purposes, Cave could not perform at the keyboard as fluidly as his songs demanded. “In the early days,” he admits, “there was no way I could sit down and play and sing a song that sounded convincing. That’s not to say I couldn’t hear how it could it be in my head, but it would very much have to be interpreted by the band. Something like ‘The Carny’ for example: all the parts were written on the piano. I just couldn’t necessarily play the stuff.”

When originally released, the release of this disc was preceded by "The Ship Song / The Train Song" 7" which set the stage for the piano/strings balladry of the full disc. Keeping in that same vein, the disc opens with "Foi Na Cruz" which, according to Wikipedia, is based partly upon the traditional Brazilian Protestant hymn of the same title. Bookending the disc is the ballad "Lucy" which features Roland Wolf's last recorded work with the band.



There are a couple of up-tempo songs on the disc - "The Witness Song" has the hand-clapping groove of a Southern revival and "The Hammer Song" has some of the Tender Prey's dark intensity.

Like the Tender Prey, this release is a digi-pack with a bonus DVD. The tracks on the DVD are:

The Good Son album in 5:1

Extra tracks:
The Train Song
Cocks 'n' Asses
Helpless
(Note: all three tracks are on Cave's B-Sides & Rarities)

Videos: – also available for download to MP3/Ipod

Music videos:
The Weeping Song
The Ship Song

"Do You Love Me Like I Love You": (Part 6: The Good Son)
Directed by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard

Links:
Nick Cave

Nick Cave - Tender Prey [Remastered] CD Review (Mute)

Nick Cave's fifth album, Tender Prey (1988), was his great leap forward. This was the first disc where Cave made a complete break from his raw, experimental Birthday Party roots and this disc establishes him as a (surprisingly) accessible epic storyteller / songwriter. The band's sound benefits from the additions of Kid Congo Powers (guitar), who was juggling a second trip through the Gun Club at the time, and keyboard/organist Roland Wolf.

Tender Prey kicks off with the seven+ minute death-row story, "Mercy Seat", which has become one of Cave's signature tunes. The are a couple other Cave staples on this disc which include the darkly pulsing "Up Jumped the Devil" and garage-rock murder ballad "Deanna".



Although Nick had lyrics ready to go for “The Mercy Seat”, the song had not yet fully taken shape. Nick attests that he sat down in the studio piano and devised a descending chord structure and “…that I was able to sing the words to those chords. Then Mick threw in the E minor – B flat vamp.” However, rather than starting with the piano, recording of the basic tracks for “The Mercy Seat” actually began with a loop which Mick says “came out of the same idea that Nick had been trying to do for ages: he wanted to have a song that was really relentlessly at you and in your face.” Nick affirms he was aiming for an aggressive rapid-fire machine-like effect similar to the churning rhythm of “Harlem” by Suicide, “… but we didn’t know how to do that, so we did it with drumsticks on the open tuning of the bass”.

Like the previous Nick Cave reissues that Mute released earlier this year, Tender Prey comes in a digi-pack with a bonus DVD. The DVD contains the album remastered in 5.1 surround sound plus the following bonus tracks & videos:

Bonus Tracks
The Mercy Seat (Video version)
Girl at the Bottom of my Glass
The Mercy Seat (Acoustic version)
City of Refuge (Acoustic version)
Deanna (Acoustic version)

Videos: – also available for download to MP3/Ipod

Music videos:
The Mercy Seat
Deanna

"Do You Love Me Like I Love You": (Part 5: Tender Prey)
Directed by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard

The remastering job is stellar and stays true to the original vinyl recording. The bonus tracks are sort of hit-and-miss for me as four of the five tracks are on Cave' 2005 release B-Sides & Rarities and I'm not much for music videos. "Do You Love Me Like I Love You" is a bit more intriguing but it is the sort of "Behind the Music" footage that you will watch once and will be unlikely pick up again anytime soon.

"Do You Love Me Like I Love You" is a series of 14 new short films by British artists Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard to accompany each album. Each 40-minute film features a compelling collage of the famous, infamous and unknown talking directly to camera about what the songs mean to them. The result is a determinedly human portrait of the unique body of work, told through those who have lived and loved the music.



Links:
Nick Cave

The Stalkers are Playing Kid Congo Powers' Birthday Party on Sat., March 27th

Garage rockers The Stalkers are playing a special show next Saturday, March 27th, for Kid Congo Powers' birthday bash. Former Cramps/Gun Club guitarist, Kid Congo is turning 51 and he will be playing a set this night with his latest band, The Pink Monkey Birds.

The show is at Secret Project Robot (210 Kent Avenue @ Metropolitan in Williamsburg) and cover is $10. On the bill with Kid Congo and The Stalkers are K-Holes, Tommy Volume (x-Star Spangles) and DJ Jonathan Toubin.

The Stalkers have a new single, "Lady Sonia", coming out at the end of the month and the band's follow-up to their 2008 debut (Yesterday is No Tomorrow) is due out sometime this summer. The band recorded their new disc in Portland, OR with Ross Skomsvold (Nice Boys) at the helm.



Links:
The Stalkers