Customer Reviews

Good Son

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"The Good Son" is a haunting collection of vintage Nick Cave songs that tell of loss, sorrow, death and despair. Those subjects may be standard Cave fare, but the amazing string arrangements featured on almost every tune add an epic sweep to the album, imbuing it with a grandeur found in the work of Jacques Brel and his protoge, Scott Walker. While Cave sings of pain and tears, the music moves you there with him--and you're better off for having gone along for the ride.

Coming hot on the heels of Nick Cave's raging, tortured masterpiece Tender Prey, The Good Son is a lot more tender and less musically chaotic by comparison, but is nearly as brilliant in its own way. The soft, rolling Foi Na Cruz sets the pace for the album well, perhaps coming as a surprise for some, but who could deny its serene beauty? The title track is much more of a "classic" Bad Seeds song by contrast, a lyrical re-telling of the Bible's prodigal son story, with fierce music and vocals to match the lyrics. None of these songs are weak, and the album's beautiful yet daring balladry approach perhaps reaches its climax with the closing song, the soaring Lucy (complete with an incredible reprise courtesy of Ronald Wolf.) However, the album's two best songs are undoubtedly The Weeping Song (memorable musical backing, coupled with a classic vocal trade-off), and what surely is one of Cave's greatest songs ever, The Ship Song, which is surely one of the most achingly beautiful and compelling love songs that I have ever heard. While not as menacing and overly forebearing as his earlier works, The Good Son is yet another high point in Nick Cave's catalog.

If you like "No More Shall We Part" then this is for you - its in that approximate mode of Cave+Bad Seeds music.

I like this album a lot - and it has grown and grown on me over the years. Lyrics like "love came a-knockin', came a-knockin' at our door. But you, you and me dear, we don't live there anymore". Ouch. Much better as he sings it too.

I was a little worried when I first played it - there's a terrible buzz from the first strum of the guitar on the first song!!

Great album though.

I have been a fan of Nick Cave for about 12 years now and eagerly await each new release. Time & time again he continues to deliver the goods. Although I feel that No More Shall We Part is one of the finest pieces of music that Nick/Bad Seeds have produced I feel that this collection stands at the top of the heap. This is the record that saw Nick really make a step forward in composition & lyric. The Ship Song is one of the most beautiful songs ever written & Sorrows Child is outstanding. Timeless music.

whilst i write this review with the benefit of having observed how nick caves's music has developed since the release of this,the "good son" album,is it with a feeling of justification that the album is described as the coming of age album.
yes,indeed,prior to this album,there has been so many glimpses of cave's obsession with love,death and sorrow (but mostly love in all its manifestations).
on this album,from the opening track,"fois na cruz" with the sad tale of love lost,(love came knocking,when sadly she didnt live there any more),is the scene set for an experience in what it means to love, to hurt and to lose in love.if one bears in mind that cave addressed universities and scholars on the subject of the love poem,does it make all the more sense.
as is to be expected, the music on this album is some of the best work produced by the bad seeds and contributes in exemplary fashion to the album's mood.
it is extremely difficult to identify any given track as the standout track on this album,but the opener,"sorrow's child","come sail ur ships around me" and "the weeping song" atand along side any of cave's finest work.

An often overlooked album by fans of Cave's more recent work, this album is pretty much a blueprint for many Nick Cave albums to follow. The album works well as a collective, with the two most prominent tracks 'The Weeping Song' and 'The Ship Song' going on to become Nick Cave standards which all his other ballads have been measured to. Certainly a high point in his recording career, although true commercial success was to come a few years later. A great album for any fan of Nick Cave.

I first picked this CD up when I was in High School at a Pawn Shop b/c I saw 'Weeping Song' on 120 Minutes or something. I hardly listened to the rest of the CD and it wasn't for 8 years that I sat down and actually 'listened' to it entireity, and was I surprised. This is one of the Great Ones that will survive our generation and one that our kids will be listening to. With the exception of one song that is kind of out of place on the CD, this album is one of the most memorable that I can recall. Nick Cave has continued to 'Wow' his audiences with continually better releases but this one is a MUST. BUY THIS ALBUM!!!

I haven't heard Nick Cave's earliest albums yet, so I can't comment on how The Good Son stacks up against those, but I can say that it compares well with his subsequent masterpieces of the 1990s.
The CD starts with a quasi-religious, almost hymn-like song, in Portuguese no less. I liked it from the start as I do the title cut, the epic style of which rather defines Nick Cave for me.
In the Hammer Song, Mick Harvey's guitar work gives it the feel of a theme of a Western movie as the vocals outline the plot.
Next to the Hammer Song, my favorite is the Weeping Song, with its unusual cadence and call/response vocals.
The funniest cut is the Witness Song which takes a perhaps inadvertent crack at faith healing and the power of suggestion.
There is not one badly written song on the album, though obviously I have my favorites. The Good Son is another fine effort from Nick Cave and serves to bolster his reputation not only as a musician, but as a songwriter whose command of language sets him far apart from most of his contemporaries.

For some reason this is the Nick Cave disc I listen to least (of the discs I have), but when I really think about it, I'm not sure why. Probably because the first 2 tracks aren't especially memorable (which isn't to say they're altogether bad.) But Sorrow's Child, The Weeping Song, and especially the Ship Song, are all excellent. The latter half of the disc is hit and miss with me. This is just about as dark and melodramatic as your typical Nick Cave, but the musical tonality is much softer. Not a NC album I typically jump for, but well worth it, for the songs I mentioned at the very least.

I like this album a lot. But then, I also love Kicking Against the Pricks. I think the songs "The Hammer Song" and "Lucy" get underrated. For that matter, so does "The Ship Song."