Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Dig Lazarus, Dig!!!

Dig Lazarus, Dig!!! ‘ Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

BY CHRIS PEKEN

Can this man really be about to clock up the half century’ How embarrassing for those pretenders half his age yet artistically impotent in comparison. Having taken the musical equivalent of a holiday by performing and releasing an album under The Grindermen moniker (with a pared down version of The Bad Seeds) Nick Cave returns refreshed with a full compliment of Bad Seeds to follow up 2004’s excellent double album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. Dig Lazarus Dig!!! sees the Bad Seeds back with renewed swagger, increased in volume, but understated playing. And as far as the man out front is concerned, his tongue is so firmly planted in his cheek that his Jason Lee moustache is in danger of being rubbed off from the inside out. We Call Upon the Author to Explain positively reeks of Cave humour, you can hear the smile as he enjoys his own words and takes a poke at himself in the process. The Preacher is in the house and in fine voice while the band continues to ‘call upon the author to explain.’ Midnight Man and Albert Goes West are genuine out and out rockers, while Today’s Lesson is a lyrical and musical homage to The Stooges. A banshee guitar sound courtesy of Mick Harvey and Warren Ellis’s ‘Fender Mandocaster’ is held through much of the album, squalling and screeching and threatening to let go at any moment, yet Night of the Lotus Eaters rolls along on little more than a throbbing bass line. Showing the greatest of restraint Cave pulls out More News From Nowhere to close the album, a brilliant epic piece using a guitar line and feel borrowed from Luna to run through a cast of Cave characters and collaborators past and present: ‘and I saw Miss Polly!!! singing with some girls / I cried strap me to the mast’, ‘Then a black girl with no cloths on / Danced across the room ‘I spent the next seven years between her legs / Pining for my wife.’ For word-craft and humour he can’t be beat; and no-one does desire and repercussion as well as our (saint) Nick.

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