01. From Her To Eternity (From Her To Eternity LP June 1984)

02. Saint Huck (From Her To Eternity LP June 1984)

03. Tupelo (A Side July 1985)

04. Sleeping Annaleah (Kicking Against The Pricks LP August 1986)

05. The Carny (Your Funeral My Trial LP November 1986)

06. The Mercy Seat (Single A Side May 1988)

07. Deanna (Tender Prey LP September 1988)

08. The Ship Song (A Side March 1990)

09. The Weeping Song (The Good Son LP April 1990)

10. Straight To You (Henry’s Dream LP April 1992)   

11. Do You Love Me? (A Side March 1994)

12. Red Right Hand (Let Love In LP April 1994)

13. Where The Wild Roses Grow (A Side October 1995)

14. Stagger Lee (Murder Ballads LP February 1996)

15. The Curse Of Millhaven (Murder Ballads LP February 1996)

16. Into My Arms (A Side February 1997)

17. Brompton Oratory (The Boatman’s Call LP March 1997)

18. (Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For (The Boatman’s Call LP March 1997)

19. God Is In The House (No More Shall We Part LP April 2001)

20. He Wants You (Nocturama LP February 2003)

21. Nature Boy (Abattoir Blues LP September 2004)

22. Babe, You Turn Me On (The Lyre Of Orpheus LP September 2004)

23. O Children (The Lyre Of Orpheus LP September 2004)

24. Dig Lazarus Dig (Dig Lazarus Dig LP March 2008)

25. More News From Nowhere (Dig Lazarus Dig LP March 2008)

26. Jubilee Street (Push The Sky Away LP February 2013)

27. Jesus Alone (Skeleton Tree LP September 2016)

28. Bright Horses (Ghosteen LP October 2019)

29. Ghosteen (Ghosteen LP October 2019)

30. Wild God (A Side March 2024)

Now a mid-sixty beacon for arty, ex post punkers, Nicholas Edward Cave has happily channelled a dozen different versions of the male psyche over the past forty years. A highbrow front man who just happens to write novels and soundtracks, in his Australian homeland he is part of the mainstream while in Britain and America he remains something of a major cult hero, albeit one who gets an invite to the Kings coronation. With his tailored suits, gold rings and slicked back, jet black hair, he has become our most well-dressed oddball, a modern day outlaw for those who can’t or won’t get up before sundown.

   For a while back in the eighties, it looked as though Ol’ Nick would become a darker, underground, Vegas Elvis. The Bad Seeds, his merry band of musical mercenaries, were once so suave and sure they were able to walk the line between boy horror and human truth at will as their master conjured tales to tell, metaphors to make and black humour to deliver, all based on the cinematic image of a stick thin preacher man in a Godforsaken, swamp bound, American town where hard-nosed women pushed crazy men to murder while the local congregation sang ironic choruses of ‘Jesus Wants You For A Sunbeam’. At his best Nick Cave made any ritual appear both unnatural and redemptive.  

   It couldn’t and didn’t last. As fascinating as all those American gothic scenarios were, like all of us, as age expanded his experience and horizons, the more his attention wandered. The killing spree ended magnificently on Murder Ballads, a masterpiece of death and destruction bearing not the slightest trace of irony or moral high ground, our hero crushing sweet Kylie Minogue’s head in with a rock on his one hit single. And that was about as lightweight as it got.

   The Boatman’s Call his tenth album in thirteen lucky years was an indication his times were changing. The melodies were lighter, commercial even, but still without compromise. A set of acoustic ruminations dominated by the spiritual aura of gospel, it was his first major step on a road that would lead to albums set in the mould of classic songwriting, the music’s sense of rolling calm belying a man trying to make sense of his own inner turmoil and continuing heroin habit, a legacy of his youthful, suicidal wildness.

   That sense of self-awareness led to No More Shall We Part and Nocturama, two albums that reflected his new state of drug free, domestic contentment by toning down the wildness and introducing a more wistful maturity to his work. Accurately described as ‘sounding like Merchant Ivory adaptions of a Nick Cave album’, that gentle criticism could hardly be applied to the remarkable Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus. A breathtaking return to form, the albums sorrowful coda ’O Children’ even made it onto a Harry Potter film.

   In a strange way the songs inclusion in The Deathly Hallows Part 1 seemed to me to be rather fitting given how, like J.K. Rowling’s fiction, his work tended to inhabit a self-contained world of wonder that was wholly his own, accessible for sure but by no means easily decipherable. And it continued to be so until the shatteringly sad death of his son Arthur in 2015 changed everything. Nick Cave’s new, devastating, year zero, that one cataclysmic event focused his message and his meaning like never before while his music gradually receded to become more like a ghostly, ambient soundtrack for his agony.    

   While it feels sacrilegious to admit it now, that’s when my own interest began to wane a little. Having suffered my own heart of darkness some five years before with the death of my own son, the profound emotion of Skeleton Tree and in particular Ghosteen, on which he bravely using his grief to strengthen his stance on life itself, proved too painful to bear. Then, at some indeterminate point, I began to question my diminishing commitment to his cause and returned to the fold, realising that Nick Cave’s intense pain and subsequent self-examination not only chimed with my own but had unexpectedly transformed him into an artist with the otherworldly aura of a holy man.

   More than that, in the third decade of the 21st century, being both visible and relevant, Nick Cave has become one of the greatest artists of not just this age but of any age, his music existing so far beyond the parameters of modern pop and rock culture that to try and explain it to a sceptic is pointless. You really just have to listen to the likes of Murder Ballads, The Boatman’s Call, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus and Ghosteen in your own time and space. And more than once too, because they are by no means an easy listen. No matter how much of an alien concept it may be in these times of instant gratification, the songs of Nick Cave require a bit of effort and your undivided attention to unlock the dark yet rewarding beauty within.

September 2024