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

And so Nicolino, having turned fifty, goes back to playing rock'n'roll even with the Cattivi Semi. The first signs came last year, with the Grinderman album, which, by the way, was one of the best of the season. After all, few know how to misuse it like he does. In recent years, we felt a bit like orphans. Sad. Those ballads all very similar, the taste of decline, inevitable. I always thought of that joke by the healthy people of the Foro Italico, when Becker would arrive and was regularly defeated in the early rounds. The audience would say: "Arridateje l'erba". And I thought of Nick, "Arridateje l'ero". It's just a mot d'esprit, of course. However. But how much better was it when he was sick in Berlin, I believe no one can deny that.

This is what we want to hear him play. Four chords and go. Some talk of garage-rock. Let's not exaggerate. It's true that at certain moments, there are very sixties atmospheres. The organ has become the leading instrument. Cave has abandoned, for this collection of songs, the piano and, we know, there is no more Blixa, and thus also the guitars are in the background.

Dirty sound (Warren Ellis now takes care of the "noise"), vital, full of sap.

It takes just a "Midnight Man", for example, with those liquid keyboards, that latent guitar, the offbeat drums, the break like "Spencer Davis Group" and the orgiastic finale... I already know it will be among the songs of the year. Like the single "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!", to say the least, sumptuous. Here the chords are really four, two for the riff, stubborn and fierce, two for a fast bridge, fast, to abandon quickly. There are also some slow ones, of course, like "Moonland", where the refrain "I'm not your favourite lover" returns, or the western tribute of "Hold On To Yourself".

But the tracks that convince the most are precisely the faster and nastier ones, like "Lie Down Here (And Be My Girl)".

So much so that after listening to the album for the first time, I felt the urge, after many years, to go see the Bad Seeds live. It's a shame that, at the moment, there are no concerts scheduled in Italy. We trust in some summer festival.

For now, we are content with the fact that Nick Cave, like Lazarus, has somehow resurrected.