Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds "Your Funeral...My Trial" 1986(orig) 2010(deluxe ed. reissue)*****

Thanks random selection, this was a good one! I enjoyed listening to this album again in its entirety. Nick Cave is a songwriting giant, one of the all-time greatest, a fact which people are slowly waking up to. Nevertheless, at that early stage of his career, he was lumped together with a disparate bunch of artists and fashion freaks collectively and derogatorily dubbed "Goths". Renowned for the screamed vocals and live antics of his previous band Birthday Party as well as for his decadent junkie lifestyle, he wasn't considered serious enough to be called an artist or commercial enough to be called a rock star. My first experience of his music was an atmospheric scene in a poetic German movie called The Wings Of Desire, where he performed this album's "Carny" in a Berlin club. The next year I got into university, and that was when my musical self-education (and record collection) seriously started; I really dug into Cave's work, and was lucky enough to see him play live often enough. After his concerts, I'd hit the bars around Exarchia and there he'd be, drinking quietly until closing time. To fans who approached him, he was courteous but distant. You couldn't really tell he was an addict, but there was certainly a dark aura about him. That was when he was still based in Berlin; he had moved there in 1982 drawn by the decadence, cheap living, and vibrant artistic scene. Immediately he enlisted two locals for his band: drummer Thomas Wydler, and guitarist Blixa Bargeld who was to become his lieutenant for almost two decades. Blixa was never a great instrumentalist, but to me The Bad Seeds were never the same after his departure. Mick Harvey, a friend and bandmate from Cave's formative years in Australia, completes the band's lineup on this album. Bassist Barry Adamson was on his way out, and only appears on a couple of tracks here. The album was recorded at the Hansa studios, famous from Bowie's Berlin trilogy, and only a few meters' distance from The Wall. I can't imagine it was a happy time, recording under the gaze of Soviet guards standing on their concrete towers ready to shoot defectors on sight - but Cave is famously not in the happy business. That said, although the album is morose and experimental in sound, and often lyrically sinister, it's also at times achingly beautiful - never more so than in opener "Sad Waters" whose subdued bass and dreamy vocals are covered under a misty veil of atmospheric organ. At moments, very Joy Division-like. "The Carny" on the other hand sounds more like Tom Waits, mutant carnival music featuring instruments like xylophone and glockenspiel alongside a multitude of spooky sound effects as Cave narrates the story of a dead horse called Sorrow. "Your Funeral My Trial" is another beautiful ballad moving with an (ahem) funereal pace. The piano and organ are, once again, dominant. Cave croons in lyrical mood, but as you probably guessed by the title, this isn't your typical love song. Sample lyric "Here I am, little lamb/Let all the bells in whoredom ring/All the crooked bitches that she was/Mongers of pain/Saw the moon become a fang". "Stranger Than Kindness" isn't written by Cave; it is a poem by his former lover Anita Lane put to music by Blixa Bargeld. I love the trembly guitar that produces a similar effect to John Cale's viola in Velvet Underground. This is where Side A of my own vinyl copy ends; the Greek edition came out as a single LP with a gatefold cover, while the international one was a double album consisting of two EP's playing at 45 RPM. Side A, corresponding to the international edition's Record 1, was almost perfect. Side B/Record 2 is a different beast: Troubadour Cave takes a back seat to Madman Cave, with whom we were already familiar from Birthday Party. I loved "Jack's Shadow", it couldn't be better even if the story made sense: Jack and his shadow escape from a dungeon, his shadow becomes a wife, and then he peels it off himself with a knife. Apparently it's somehow inspired by the story of writer, and convicted murderer, Jack Henry Abbot. It's got a dramatic vocal sung over unruly bass and piano. Some of the unidentified noises could be Blixa: Cave always said that what he loved about his playing was that he made his guitar sound like anything except a guitar. The next song "Hard On For Love" is even more rowdy while the lyrics manage to mix the Bible with pornographic imagery. "She Fell Away" is another frantic piece, before the final "Long Time Man", a relatively straight cover of a 60's murder ballad by Tim Rose; this sounds like it should belong to Cave's previous LP Kicking Against The Pricks, a covers album that contained a number of similarly-themed folk and blues songs. Decades after I bought my Funeral... vinyl copy (for 900 drachmas, as the sticker on it attests) Cave's entire discography was re-released on Deluxe double CD/multi-tracked DVD-Audio packages. This prompted me to re-buy Your Funeral...My Trial, as well as a few others which I only had on vinyl - so, now I have three formats of the album, four if you count mp3. The DVD-Audio is well worth hearing; I mean I'm not a headphone guy, I prefer the music to fill the space around me, which befits an atmospheric album like this better than any typical guitar-bass-drums LP. While this is a skeletal rock band playing, they are quite inventive in the studio: Thomas Wylder reportedly plays a fire-extinguisher as a percussion, Blixa's guitar playing we already talked about, and Mick Harvey plays just about everything, and anything, else. Credit for the sound should also go to the producer Mark "Flood" Ellis,who later also produced seminal albums by Depeche Mode, U2, Smashing Pumpkins and many others. Extras of the deluxe edition include an inessential B-side called "Scum" (an amusingly petty attack on a rock journalist) but also an informative booklet and short documentary. Those 80's and early 90's albums by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are often considered inferior to his later, more intellectual, output, but I disagree. I find them to be more vital, edgy. and underground - but then again, it's the work of a smacked out young man wallowing in decadence at a Berlin squat. You wouldn't want him to remain the same. Nowadays he makes elegant and literary adult records, and dispenses philosophical advice online. One thing's constant: he's still a fantastic live performer. Especially when he's backed by The Bad Seeds, who (even without Blixa and Harvey) are still arguably the world's greatest backing band.

The CD/DVD-Audio Deluxe edition 

 ***** for Sad Waters, The Carny, Your Funeral My Trial, Stranger Than Kindness, Jack's Shadow

**** for She Fell Away

*** for Hard On for Love, Long Time Man 

** for Scum

Gordon Lightfoot "Gordon Lightfoot" 2001(comp) 1962-1978(rec)***

When random selection produced this CD for review, I realized an omission on my part: when an artist I like passes away, as it happened with Gordon Lightfoot a year ago, I usually spend some time listening to their records. In his case, I must have been preoccupied with something else; I don't remember listening to these songs recently. Granted, I don't have many of his albums in my collection: just this compilation and a 60's LP on vinyl. I remember owning one or two more vinyl records of his, but I seem to have sold them during the great vinyl purge. Infuriatingly, this compilation is one of those budget CDs that contain no information on the artist or recording year of the tracks within. I can't fathom why; would it cost more to add a few words? They wouldn't even waste more paper, the inner side of the booklet is completely blank. In any case, I researched the provenance of the selections, and it turns out that this isn't so bad a selection: almost all of the albums he released during this period (a dozen, in as many years) are represented by one of two tracks each, neatly presented in chronological order, the better to appreciate the artists' evolution. Starting with his very first 7' single "(Remember Me) I'm The One", a 1962 Elvis-like ballad, and the only cover here. The next entry ("I'm Not Sayin") comes from 1966, and his LP debut, Lightfoot. It shows a definite Dylan influence, with a touch of Phil Ochs in the vocal department. From 1967's The Way I Feel we get "Go Go Round" and "The Way I Feel", songs that remind me of Simon & Garfunkel. These are followed by the more upbeat, socially conscious, "Black Day In July" (Did She Mention My Name, 1968), a vivid recounting of the bloody Detroit race riots of the previous year. "Bitter Green" (Back Here On Earth, 1968) is lighter, with a hint of country a la Glen Campbell. "If You Could Read My Mind" (Sit Down Young Stranger, 1970) is another ballad in the same vein; from here on his songs retain the same influences but have richer, albeit always tasteful, orchestration, bridging the gap between earnest folk and MOR easy listening. I can only think of one other artist who did it as successfully, and that was Cat Stevens. "Talking In Your Sleep" and "Summer Side Of Life" come from the Summer Side Of Life LP (1971), "Beautiful" from Don Quixote (1972), and "Sundown" and "Carefree Highway" from 1974's Sundown. All are great, but the best are the ones on the two opposite ends of his pop folk hybrid: "Rainy Day People" (Cold On The Shoulder, 1975) is a smooth pop ballad, while "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" (Summertime Dream, 1976) is narrative folk at its very best. The compilation closes with "Race Among The Ruins" (also from Summertime Dream), and two selections from Endless Wire (1978): "The Circle Is Small" and "Daylight Katy". After that, Lightfoot's international popularity declined, although he still held national treasure status in his native Canada. Now, as with any compilation, the question is how good is this as an introduction to the artist? The plus points here are that it covers his most acclaimed period, and aims to be representative by including something from each release. Is this really "The Best Of" Gordon Lightfoot? To be fair, the compilers don't make any such claim; and indeed, there are some obvious omissions. On the other hand, what's here is pretty good; after all, if Dylan's quote that “Lightfoot died without ever having made a bad song” is true, one could not go too wrong with selecting material for this comp. I'd give this collection 3,5* for the songs, but 2* for the packaging. It should suffice for the very casual fan who only knows 3 or 4 of his songs, which they'd probably find here. I was one myself, but I'm now tempted to dig deeper.

***** for The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald 

**** for I'm Not Sayin', The Way I Feel, Black Day In July, Bitter Green, If You Could Read My Mind, Talking In Your Sleep, Sundown , Rainy Day People

*** for (Remember Me) I'm The One, Go Go Round,Summer Side Of Life, Beautiful, Carefree Highway, Race Among The Ruins, The Circle Is Small, Daylight Katy

The Bevis Frond "Live At The Great American Music Hall, San Francisco" 1999***

I've already written about the formation of Bevis Frond in a previous post about their debut proper, Miasma. Fast forward a dozen years, and Nick Saloman isn't playing everything himself; he's fronting a real band instead (i.e. himself on vocals and guitar, Andy Ward on drums and Adrian Shaw on bass). Being a big garage/neo-psychedelia fan at the time I was very excited to see them play when they first came to Athens (1998 at the AN Club) and was incredibly bummed to miss that gig due to high fever (mine, not Saloman's). Thankfully I got another chance next year, when he appeared at the (bigger) Rodon Club. To me, this was one of the year's major concerts, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw there were hardly 50 people present in what was then the city's biggest indoors live rock venue. It was nevertheless a great gig, Saloman displaying excellent musicianship as well as a lack of showmanship - just an affable guy who looked nothing like a rock star, and who wasn't dismayed by the empty club, happy to chat with his few loyal fans and to play his heart out for more than 2 hours. I seriously have never seen Rodon that empty during its two-decade existence; local bands could at least count on friends and family showing up. So long into one's career, and to still remain a cult artist - others would have given up, yet another 25 years went by since then, and here I read once more glowing reviews for his latest album in the pages of Mojo and Uncut. It brought that night at Rodon to mind, and made me pick up this CD for a new listen; it was recorded only a few months before the Rodon concert, at the other end of the world: San Francisco, USA. The album preserves the aural part of the concert as it was - no overdubs or tweaking of any sort, so I expect this must be similar to what I heard at the time. I can't say whether the setlist was also similar; I do remember hearing some tracks from New River Head which was among my favorite albums at the time, but not "Signed D.C." the track which closes this CD. The sole cover here (from Love's 1966 debut), this bluesy tune soon turns into a 10-minute psychedelic freakout jam reminiscent of Bevis' earlier experimental work - which is all good and fine but there's something he (I just decided that from now on I will use "Bevis Frond" to describe both Nick Saloman the man, and his band) is even better in, and that's composing great rock songs that sound rooted to the late 60s/early 70's. Opener "Hole Song #2" from the sprawling North Circular LP (1997) is a grungy number, followed by a Neil Young & Crazy Horse-like rocker from Miasma (1987). Two more songs come from (his then latest album) North Circular: Floydian ballad "Love Is" and fantastic rocker "The Wind Blew All Around Me" with its fine guitar solo and memorable chorus. From 1988's Triptych we get the Byrdsian "Lights are Changing" while the same influences are evident on "He'd Be A Diamond" from 1991's New River Head. Other tracks from that LP here include the title track (somewhat reminiscent of Screaming Trees) and atmospheric "Stain On The Sun". Then it's forward to 1992's London Stone and noisy "Well Out of It", and blues rocker "Stoned Train Driver" (Superseeder, 1995). Lastly, from Son Of Walter (1996) we get the mid tempo "Red Hair". The power trio format is a perfect fit for these songs: Bevis' inventive guitar playing (think Jimi Hendrix meets J. Mascis) is perfectly complemented by the veteran rhythm section (by members of such 70s stalwarts as Hawkwind and Camel) while the arrangements generally stick close to the originals. To tell the truth I'm not a huge fan of the audio vérité sound (hence the 3* rating) even though the label is obviously proud of it. Given the tracklist and quality of performance, and in the absence of any Best-Of compilations, this live CD might make the perfect introduction to Bevis' work - if only it was a bit better recorded and produced. Never mind; any one of Bevis' countless records is a testament to his criminally underrated songwriting genius. Judging by the reviews of his latest album, half a century later the world is beginning to catch on.

**** for Maybe, New River Head, Stoned Train Driver, Lights are Changing, He'd Be A Diamond, Stain On The Sun, The Wind Blew All Around Me

*** for Hole Song #2, Love Is, Red Hair, Well Out Of It, Signed DC