Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Let Love In

THE REVIEW

After the abyss, the wait, the epiphany of hope offers a new beginning, a new skin to wear to start over.

In the '80s, heroin was the lifeblood for the endless frustration of existence, simultaneously the killer and savior of those living in continuous catharsis; it vibrated in the absence of harmony, in the fierce beats and dissonances that the Bad Seeds staged in the theater of the preacher of the apocalypse. All of this, unsurprisingly, in Berlin.

Up to "The Good Son," the rebirth in every possible sense: the well-known religious conversion, (his strong spirituality had indeed characterized him since the beginning) the relationship with Viviane Carneiro, the birth of his son Henry. Cave moved to São Paulo. To offer unconditional dwelling to love, (in the highest possible conception) can mean the total acceptance of those wounds that know no peace and healing, soul stabbings that must be allowed to bleed to avoid disappearing into pain. "Let Love In" is the album of this inner conflict, of wanting to stay at the helm at all costs when the ship is sinking and the icy wind allows no breath.

Do You Love Me? - Cave repeats in the opening track, as he relives the anguish - Like I Love You - of a love that was an existential anchor, and now the reason in "Nobody's Baby Now" seeks to find the balance broken by despair, only able to softly admit the loss, the detachment from and of those loved; unable to find the answers.  "search for an answer that refuses to be found, I don't know why, I don't know how, she's nobody's baby now"

The infernal blues of "Loverman" is that of the lover consumed by passion, a slave to the game caught between life and death of one who gives their soul at any price, the suicidal, diabolical, and equally vulnerable love.

"Jangling Jack" which lives of the anger common to the Australian artist, "Red Right Hand" (embellished by the masterful arrangement of the Bad Seeds) which in some ways anticipates certain sounds of the subsequent "Murder Ballads," constitute the only moment of relief (relatively speaking) of the record.

Until the title track opens with a meditative electric intertwining with Cave's piano, and the lyrical catharsis that follows is the best possible snapshot of the inner turmoil of the lover, powerfully romantic, who kneels and then asks pardon (or rather mercy) in "Thirsty Dog" to then regain a desolate composure in the nocturnal and solemn "Ain't Gonna Rain Anymore".

The art of pathos reaches its peak in the desperate "Lay Me Low", the gospel choir of the Bad Seeds accompanying the final cry of pain from Cave, who at the limit of any capacity for endurance perhaps prefers to remain on earth, with swollen eyes and clenched fists. The album, which guided Nick Cave into the circle of rock stars, is nothing but the exorcism (or attempt at) of the shadows of its author, which purify through writing like a liver.

The inevitable conclusion picks up the opening theme, and as in Greek tragedy, the listener who has suffered so much along with the author emerges metaphorically chipped but internally enriched by the sublimity of the visionary, profoundly human poetic (and tragic, indeed) of an Ink King for the last time, perhaps, without defenses.