Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds – Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
Let me start by admitting that (other than his Murder Ballads collaborations with Kylie and P J Harvey in 1996) Nick Cave’s music has never grabbed me enough to make me listen without lazy ears. So, when I first heard the singles from his most recent record coming from my DAB, I was surprised to find myself immediately attached to these rich, dark and beautiful songs.
This album is the sound of a once glamorous film noir. It’s cold, threatening and always on the brink of violence. The hypnotic rhythmic grind that runs throughout the record from the very first beat has the perfect frontman in Cave. His is a salt of the earth voice, which has clearly seen a lot of fast living and its dark, inevitable fallout.
Consisting of stories of men and women falling from grace, the album paints a bleak picture. It’s acutely aware of the harsh realities of human existence and the dark places that having too much desire can lead you to. The songs are cinematic in their descriptions of characters with opening song ‘Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!’ telling the story of Larry, who builds his life on ‘high hopes and thin air.’ It charts his rise and inevitable downfall, a theme that runs throughout the album and is indicative of its title.
In the Bible, Jesus resurrected Lazarus. Cave seems to suggest that modern life beckons all of us from our own ‘tombs’ and offers us unrealistic promises: ‘He never asked to be raised up from the tomb, I mean, no one ever actually asked him to forsake his dreams.’
Lonely narrators can be found in practically every one of the album’s 11 tracks. ‘Moonland’ finds a man aimlessly driving in his car, painfully aware of his own loneliness with the cold night setting in. He has no direction, no advice and no answers.
The album’s climax, ‘More News From Nowhere’, finds the narrator stumbling around a brothel, blaming every one of the girls for his sorry state. He desperately tries to interact with all of them before finally admitting that it’s time to let go: ‘Don’t it make you feel so sad, don’t the blood rush to your feet, to think that everything you do today, tomorrow is obsolete.’ It’s a classic case of domesticity calling the rebel home, something the broken narrator acknowledges, but can’t bare the thought of: ‘Well I gotta say goodbye.’
The sound of the record is based on a traditional bluesy pub rock band, tilted ever-so-slightly off centre in order to give it a fresh perspective. The backbone consists of fairly standard instrumentation, but the inclusion of unexpected sounds, like steel drums or a hugely distorted violin give it a truly unique flavour. Several songs are punctuated by filthy, distorted, blues-inspired riffs, covered in sweat, dirt and spit, a sound which marries the vocal delivery and lyrical content wonderfully well.
Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! ebbs and flows as every good album should and offers the right mix of instant gratification and personal discoveries that only reveal themselves on repeated listening. For anyone, like myself, who is not overly familiar with Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, I suggest that this album’s a great place to start. This is classy music in every sense of the word, which reaches levels that the likes of White Lies or Lily Allen could only ever dream of.
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