Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds
Live Seeds

THE REVIEW

Of “Live Seeds” (or the killer carousel of “The Mercy Seat”)

This is a weeping song
A song in which to weep
While all the men and women sleep
This is a weeping song
But I won't be weeping long

Pseudo-review with a celebratory intent (Who cares if there are twelve more about Cave and his henchmen...)

We remembered him in his English breakfasts made of heroin. The slurring gait of a Hamlet of our times. A suburban rocker. Cigarette, black latex pants, black underwear. All black. Yes, Nick Cave. Him.
In 1993, rusty needles still pierced his back, but he was already bouncing on the mercy seat, or “The Mercy Seat,” the opening track of a purifying rite masquerading as a concert. Here's the killer carousel. “The Stripper” (imagine he's wearing the usual sugar paper colored jacket and has donned arched eyebrows for the occasion) is on stage and his cavernous, deep voice, staggers on the time marked by the echoes and reverb of an obsessive drum. Increasingly obsessive. Magnificent Nick, as you dig holes in the arms of your soul.

Songs that take shape like broken lines. Dark, distorted, twisted. Some cracks of light in “Deanna” and in “The Ship Song,” essential in the twilight flow of the organ in the background, before returning to the black velvet abyss of “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry”: metallic guitars, dirty and raw sounds, ghostly choirs and then you “John Finn’s Wife”: a bit new wave, a bit gothic funk. In the background, rarefied sounds slithering behind the tight percussion. Much poetry.
“Turpelo”: hard, notes that tumble down with difficulty from claustrophobic keyboards and smoky sound bases. Music that bleeds. Cave hangs himself with his own vocal cords. “This is a weeping song,” he says. It's the eighth track. And it starts with a music box as beautiful as it is mournful. A “prayer on fire”.


Then, for you pure souls: “Jack The Ripper” in primis, with the murder ballad swing, the “story of the viper, it’s long and lean with poison tooth”. Here the devastation is total. And then, “From Her To Eternity,” beautiful, practically a game of shanghai between minimal keyboards and percussion: the beginnings of our dark prophet, written when the Birthday Party were just that famous pair of leather pants in his wardrobe, nothing like a punk revival fair.
Hi Nick, I have a photo of you. There you were putting out cigarette butts on your fingertips. Your shadow is here, I see it leaving a piece of ash on that ebony piano.

One morn I awakened
A new sun was shining
The sky was a Kingdom
All covered in blood
The moon and the stars
Where the troops that lay conquered
Like fruit left to wither
Poor spiritual food

Or rather not, let's end it like this:

And John Finns' wife
Took all the flowers down
From her hair
And threw them on the ground
And the flies did hum
And the flies did buzz around
Poor John Finn
Lying dead upon the ground
Lying dead upon the ground