Murder Ballads

Nick Cave, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 20, 1996)
• Original Release Date: February 20, 1996
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Reprise / Wea
• ASIN: B000002N5S
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #80,075 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Song of Joy

2. Stagger Lee

3. Henry Lee

4. Lovely Creature

5. Where the Wild Roses Grow

6. The Curse of Millhaven

7. The Kindness of Strangers

8. Crow Jane

9. O'Malley's Bar

10. Death Is Not the End

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Nick Cave's been writing songs about killing and other evil things since he first surfaced in 1980 as the Birthday Party's pale, skinny, goth-punk Jim Morrison. But the murder ballads that provide this set's title are different, tantalizingly deliberate. Sure, there's plenty of trademark Cave here, but Murder Ballads is a fascinating concept album that uses the narrative ballad form of the English folk tradition to tell of murder: random deaths, passion crimes, and killing sprees, all in one package. Cave clearly thrives in this genre, and he produces some of his sharpest and most facile writing to date. "Song of Joy," a genuinely scary campfire mystery of a murdered family and an unnamed killer, chillingly weaves clues into the lyrics, while "Where the Wild Roses Grow" is a narrative duet in which killer (Cave) and victim (pop star Kylie Minogue) reveal parallel tales. Cave even shows his knack for adaptation on Bob Dylan's "Death Is Not the End": he recontextualizes a song of heavenly comfort into a sort of zombie "We Are the World" (featuring Minogue, PJ Harvey, Shane MacGowan, and others) in which "death is not the end" of pain and suffering. Above all, Murder Ballads should be heard as a work of pulp fiction--as sensationally funny as it is harrowing. The already violent traditional song "Stagger Lee" becomes gangsta folk, so ridiculously packed with obscenity and brutality it would make the Geto Boys cringe. And Cave's (unintentional?) point to would-be censors--that bad-ass songs existed long before rappers polluted the airways--should not be missed. --Roni Sarig

Product Description

5.1 Remastered Collector's Editions includes:
Remastered Stereo Album
New Surround Mix
B-Sides of the Singles
Specially Commissioned Short Film by UK artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard
Videos
Exclusive Sleeve Notes
& More --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vicious...But Delicious, December 18, 2001

By 

Kurt Harding "bon vivant" (Boerne TX) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Murder Ballads (Audio CD)

I bought this CD after reading some of the reviews and I must say its some of the most downright chilling music I've ever heard. It isn't the lyrics, you can hear songs equally violent listening to rap. Its all in the musical arrangements and Cave's sinister vocal style. That combustible combination makes Murder Ballads a vicious yet delicious masterpiece.
Stagger Lee is simply stunning. I have heard old versions and they don't come close to what Cave has done after he adds his touch.
Where the Wild Roses Grow is a hauntingly beautiful and strikingly sordid song that reminds me of one of Joyce Carol Oates' early macabre short stories. Kylie Minogue's angelic vocals as victim are in sharp contrast to the evil that emanates from Cave's.
My favorite is the epic O'Malley's Bar, a tale of a man gone mad who ruthlessly and brutally murders everyone in his neighborhood bar but shrinks at the end from taking his own life. Appalling violence marks this fourteen minute saga from start to finish.
Songs of murder and violent death have been around since the days of antiquity, but here Nick Cave masterfully takes the genre to a new level. If you enjoy mystery, horror, a well-written and well-told tale, aren't too squeamish and are open to something unusual, then I highly recommend that you buy Murder Ballads. You won't be sorry.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything went black and I came down spinning..., February 8, 2000

By 

elisa (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder Ballads (Audio CD)

I have discovered that "Murder Ballads" is a great CD for the lovelorn. Several years ago, my five-year relationship with "the boy of my dreams" ended. Months later, I was still in a very dark place. I had always been an off-again, on-again Nick Cave fan, and didn't own every album. I was DJ-ing at the time, and someone gave me a promotional copy of "Murder Ballads."

Within weeks, it had become the soundtrack to my world. It was vicious, it was grim, it was hysterically funny. It was like the script of "Pulp Fiction," "Reservoir Dogs" or "Jackie Brown" as told through English folksong or Appalachian mountain tale.

I giggled with horrified glee as a loving family man and good doctor murdered his family with cold calculation on "Song of Joy." I guffawed as openly gay criminal Stagger Lee threw over expectant hooker Nellie Bound, to molest and murder her manly boyfriend. I cheered as Crow Jane efficiently gunned down the 20 miners who raped her, and laughed as a lovelorn boy was led astray by the beautiful ghost ("Lovely Creature") of a girl long since dead. I smirked and sighed at the overwrought tearstained drama of "Kindness of Strangers" and "Where the Wild Roses Grow." I loved the Nick and P.J. (Harvey) duet, "Henry Lee." I think we'd known for a long time that P.J. was Nick's perfect foil, and letting her play murderous mistress to Nick's faithless lover was perfect musical casting.

Finally, we were given the opportunity to hear Nick go postal on the local patrons of "O'Malley's Bar," and the local suburbanites of the town of Millhaven, in which Nick casts himself as a golden-ringleted, psychopathic fourteen year old girl.

And you know what? All that snickering made me feel much better. And I learned to love Nick Cave and his bombastic albums like "Murder Ballads," "Let Love In," "Henry's Dream," and parts of "Tender Prey." I loved his soulful/bluesy albums, like "The Firstborn is Dead," and "Your Funeral, My Trial." And I learned to love his other 'concept' album, "Kicking Against the Pricks" (all covers, all fabulous) almost as much, if not moreso, than "Murder Ballads." Hearing Nick and the boys outdo Tom Jones' oversexed delivery of "Sleeping Annaleah," Nick's truly sorrowful version of Johnny Cash's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," and earnest cover of "Long Black Veil," in addition to other humorous, haunting, harrowing covers of various standards is definitely worth your money.

In truth, every Nick Cave album is a concept album--love, death, murder, rebirth, confession, obsession, revenge. It might take a brave soul, but everybody's got one hidden somewhere.

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrifying Beauty Taken To Its Obvious Conclusion, August 29, 2002

By 

3rdeadly3rd (Brisbane, Queensland Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder Ballads (Audio CD)

Similar to almost any other Australian music-lover, I'd heard "Where The Wild Roses Grow" countless times before I decided to buy this album. Indeed, my actual purchase may have been as a sort of "NOW, will you stop playing this song?" reaction. Regardless, this CD is simultaneously the most terrifying one I have ever listened to from start to finish and also the most amazing idea I have ever seen committed to CD.

The title says it all, Cave and his Bad Seeds have taken the age-old murder ballad and had their wicked way with it and would now like you to hear the fruits of their labour. Not all of these songs are old murder ballads, and those which are tend to be present with slight alterations or in lesser-known forms, but they all would not sound out of place at any time in history. The reason being that they deal with topics such as cold-blooded murder, obsessive passion and crazed hatred which are not alien to any culture.

The opener, "Song Of Joy", is full of typical Cave irony. The title refers to the wife of the singer - killed in a particularly brutal fashion, as the song reveals. Of course, the idea of naming such an unrepentantly nasty song "Song Of Joy" is only what we have come to expect from this tortured genius. Cave's wit surfaces with such moments as the description of the wife becoming sad and "Joy in name only". As the song goes on, Cave weaves in a reference to Milton's "Paradise Lost" (interestingly enough, the same section which gave him the title of an earlier song) and gives some very tantalising clues to the killer's identity. A word of warning, listening to this song at night as not overly recommended, the atmospheric nature of gloom is more than all-pervading.

"Stagger Lee" and "Henry Lee" are both old ballads, and routinely listed as some of the best murder ballads of all time. "Stagger Lee" is performed in a rarer version which makes the (anti-)hero significantly less repentant. For some reason, this actually makes Stag somewhat more appealing as a subject. "Henry Lee" is a duet with PJ Harvey, in which the traditional murder ballad roles are reversed. This time, it's the man - a terribly flaky character as portrayed by Cave - who gets done in by Harvey, again, the listener finds themselves cheering the killer.

"Lovely Creature" and "Wild Roses" both deal with crimes of passion. "Lovely Creature"s pace - significantly faster than the songs around it - makes it a standout, as does the lyric which does not explicitly state that murder occurred. Indeed, the lyric reveals a depth of passion which is somewhat odd considering that the indication is that the murderer and victim have only just met. The ethereal, wordless female vocals backing Cave add immeasurably to the effect - as Cave paints a picture of a killer who may not quite be on the right side of sanity. "Wild Roses" covers much of the same ground, and could almost serve as a dual-narrative version of "Lovely Creature" were it not for the time factor. Kylie Minogue's voice provides a sharp foil of innocence against which Cave's voice - in a masterful performance - relays its clear-minded insanity. The song is especially poignant considering the romance between the singers which existed at the time - the lyrics reveal considerable passion on both sides, but yet there is an air of inevitability about the death. One particularly arch touch is Minogue's revelation in her verse that Cave's parting words of "All beauty must die" became merely "a muttered word".

Then comes the section of the album where Cave loosens up - if such a description could ever be applied. "The Curse Of Millhaven" is hilarious in the most perverse sense of the word. Cave portrays a young woman in a small town where a whole series of gruesome deaths just keep happening, and over a very rapidly-paced instrumental, the listener is left gasping for breath as more and more sadistic scenarios are described. When all is revealed in a wonderful denouement, the listener will almost invariably think "Oh well, the dead ones had it coming to them", this is because of Cave's incredible talent of making the least sympathetic characters of his songs become the most engaging of anti-heros.

"The Kindness Of Strangers" and "Crow Jane" are rather peculiar in relation to the rest of the album. The former is a rather straightforward narrative which seems a bit unsatisfactory when it ends. Cave has inserted a moral about stranger danger and it is unclear exactly how he wants this to be taken. Nonetheless, the story itself is quite a clever idea and the muffled crying as the song fades out is a nice touch. "Crow Jane" is almost too poetic for its own good, as it takes a few listens to work out exactly what's going on. Granted Cave is a singer-songwriter, but on an album of murder ballads, it would be nice to be able to understand everything first go - guts and glory, so to speak.

"O'Malley's Bar" is the only misfire of the album. It appears to almost be a jam session at times, with Cave trotting out a bizarre lyric about a killer with a God-complex killing all the occupants of a bar. There's nothing wrong with that, but the length of the song (some 15 minutes) is rather tedious. There is some room for Blixa Bargeld to deliver his sound effects, which fans of Einsturzende Neubauten will recognise very quickly.

The album ends with all the guests, plus a few others, joining in a version of Bob Dylan's "Death Is Not The End". Here, the effect that Cave was trying to achieve by counterpointing the female vocals of Harvey and Minogue with his own dark voice is completely realised. The addition of some vocals with German accents provides a third contrast.

Overall, absolutely worthwile as a purchase. A tour-de-force of what Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds have been aiming at doing ever since their inception.