Customer Reviews

Kicking Against the Pricks

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Once I read an interview with Leonard Cohen, and he was talking - very wisely, as usual - on how Cave ate, digested and spitted out in his own way Cohen's song "Avalanche" (in Cave's "From her to eternity"). Well, yes, this is a cover album, but in its way it is profoundly a Cave's album. Cave is a great lyricist and musician, but he is also an interpreter of first class, because he manage to make other people's song in his own very peculiar sound. Some reviewers wrote that here Cave chose his favourite artists. I don't think it's completely true: I would rather say that he chose his peculiar themes, the same that we find in his own compositions - digging and burying, killing without a reason or for jealousy or beauty or love's sake, corpses that come up from the grave despite the rules of death, the power of natural elements and especially water as an image of time and changing (also epistemologically) as well as of the deepest and murkiest regions of the mind, breaking the law and death penalty, judging and killing and leaving... The quality of the songs is very good, but I think what really makes this album great is its inner thematic coherence, as different steps in a very contorted but eriching path Cave has been following since the very beginning of his career. Follow him, you might agree or disagree with him, but as every good artist he is always showing you the same things from new and more revealing points of view.

And, strangely, best Nick Cave album of all, considering his catalog of excellent and provocative original material (most of which you should buy, especially the stuff from around this time, like _From Her to Eternity_ and _First Born Is Dead_). I'm sure there is no other album out there whose title can be said to reference both a book of short stories by Samuel Beckett (to go with Cave's minimalistic tendencies) and the New Testament (to amplify his obsession with retribution and other biblical topics). Perfect company. The emotion he wrings out of these old and largely obscure songs is well-nigh unparalleled in the history of recorded music. Several of these are country songs by the likes of Johnny Cash and Earl Campbell, feeding beautifilly into Cave's Southern Gothic kick at the time. Then you have the heroin chic of VU's "All Tomorrow Parties" turned cowboy with yells and whips. Then there's gospel (sung rousingly in barbershop quartet style on "Jesus Met the Woman at the Well"--you'd swear you're at a tent revival). And then classic rock in the guise of a foot-stomping version of . . . Ram Jam's "Black Betty"? I'll just say that what the original possesses in Queen-like pastiche and excess, the cover compensates for in field holler mania. All of this is made all-the-more poignant by the very basic recording values at play here. The Bad Seeds thrive with a lead man on the edge between maudlin and mad; they play off him perfectly, making the bare-bones recording jump out at you with the virtue of frantic and impassioned playing alone. The only other place where you will hear such a range of emotion evinced from two or three chords is on a record of Lightnin' Hopkins or Leadbelly originals, making this one of the most visceral listening experiences you will ever encounter. Especially noteworthy is the extremely "out there" version of Jimi Hendrix's "Hey Joe," where Cave pounds the piano within an inch of the hammers' lives.

Albums of covers are usually best to be avoided, but Nick Cave's Kicking Against the Pricks is that exception. It's not his best album but for Nick Cave fans it's a sentimental favourite. His individual takes on rock, folk and gospal music may not exceed the originals, but his interpretations are usually right on the money. His cover of Johnny Cash's tale of a nomadic musician in The Folk Singer, his take on rock classics like Alex Harvey Band's Hammer Song and The Velvet Underground's All Tomorrows Parties, are all fantastic. But his version of Roy Orbison's Running Scared which builds from nothing into a soaring crescendo really takes the cake.

It's a damn fine little record.

Anyone who followed Cave's career in the early 80's knew that this was coming. And what a wonderful set of intepretations this is. From the creepy opener "Muddy Water" to the closing "Carnival is Over", Cave and his bandmates set about stripped-bare arrangements over every song so that the essential evilness oozes out. For "Long Black Veil", instead of the sad, murder ballad, we get the sense of evil the song was always intended to be. And "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", now in this setting is revealed as desperate, lonely vision of wanderlust. But those are just the highlights. Cave's basso profundo voice and dazzling displays of wrecked emotion are more than enough to justify its purchase--its creepy vision of human wreckage/redemption were something Cave and the Bad Seeds had a difficult time following up as the years progressed. Trivia: Tracy Pew, the late Bad Seeds bassist makes his last recorded appearance on "Hey Joe".

What else can I say?

From "Black Betty", to "Muddy Waters", and back around the beaten track to "Hey Joe"...Cave explores and reinterprets some of the greatest sounds of the 20th century. He does so with panache, humour, passion and a talent that is simply breathtaking. His interpretation will not be to everyone's taste - but there is no disputing that this is one of Nick's most intriguing and unique works.
Buy it, listen to it, and listen some more.

I first heard about how great Nick Cave is about a year ago and selected Kicking Against The Pricks to see how I would like him. I absolutely hated it! I could not stand Long Black Veil, Black Betty, or By The Time I Get to Phoenix and my dislike of those three songs colored my view of this CD until just last month.
In the interim, I chanced to hear No More Shall We Part and Murder Ballads. I liked those a lot, so my interest in Nick Cave's music was rekindled.
Over the last four months, I have acquired most of the Cave opus and have really gotten into him, so I decided to dust this off and give it another shot. Am I ever glad I did.
As the mournful organ solo of Muddy Water filled the air I had to wonder why I did not like it before. Cave's rendition is more than classic. From start to finish, Cave really does offer unique and enjoyable interpretations of songs both famous and obscure. Though I still don't like Black Betty, I do now like Long Black Veil and even came to appreciate the smarmy pop standard By The Time I Get To Phoenix! If Cave can cause me to like a song like that, then he IS a genius.
In addition to the aforementioned, I really enjoy Sleeping Annaleah, The Singer, Roy Orbison's Running Scared, All Tomorrow's Parties, and The Carnival is Over. Whether a song demands pathos, menace or romance The Bad Seeds give it just the right touch.
Sometimes it pays to revisit a disliked CD and see if you can find anything meritorious about it that you missed the first time. I do that frequently and this time found a treasure.

When I first picked up this disc in the late 80's, it was a pricey import. I had never heard of Nick Cave at that point, but was shopping in an "underground" record store and liked the title, thought I'd give it a try. This was soon to become a party classic. For some reason I unloaded this to a used record store in the early 90's, and hadn't thought about it for years until I recently saw it again and picked it up. After one listen -- "Woah!! Black Betty...bam ba lam...oah!...Black Betty Black Betty!!" This is great early seeds, music that influenced him, done in a style all his own.

I believe there is another disc out there that has the ORIGINAL versions of most of these songs (done by the original artists), which is probably worth picking up if you like this one.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' second album is outstanding. It still has some of the grittiness of "From Her to Eternity" but shows the band moving in a more refined direction.

What can I say? If'n you don't know who Nick Cave is then don't bother. If'n you do know who Nicky is then pull up a headphone. Relentlessly original and personal renditions of standards? Maybe not before the Cave-man but most definately after his bone deep interpretations. One of my absolute, kill me and pry it from my cold, dead hands favorites.

There's not much else to say really. All the emotions you could think of are on display and the production on the album is minimal which gives the songs an added effect. In a way it shows how cover albums should be done or even just one cover version of a song should be done. That's all there is to say