Of course the probability that there is a Nick Cave album to match the mighty "Murder Ballads" is considerably less, so if you are interested in a true Nick Cave masterpiece, read the review below this one. That said, here we go with the latest offering.
Disc 370 is...Nocturama
Artist: Nick CaveYear of Release: 2003
What’s Up With The Cover?: The head shot, this one dressed up with heavy backlighting. This cover is uninteresting, and only the constant presence of the "What's Up With the Cover?" section of the blog that I know you yearn for daily, has moved me to make a comment at all.
How I Came To Know It: This is just me drilling through Nick Cave music. I bought this one very late (in the last couple of years) and chose it because it fell nicely between 2001's "No More Shall We Part (reviewed at Disc 65) and 2004's "Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus," both records that I love.
How It Stacks Up: We have seven Nick Cave albums, and I plan to get more. For now, however I must sadly place "Nocturama" in last place.
Rating: 3 stars.
If I were to tweet a review for "Nocturama" it would go something like this:
Nick Cave lightens up; remains intermittently morose.
Fortunately, I don't tweet or suck facebook, or whatever the kids are calling it these days, so you'll have the chance to learn a little bit more about "Nocturama" simply by continuing on. If you prefer tweets, you're done - and thanks for coming.
OK, for those still remaining, a nocturne is an instrumental composition of a pensive, dreamy mode, especially one for piano. Hence (I believe) Nick Cave's "Nocturama" which is a nocturne with Cave's particular brand of grotesquerie branded onto it.
The result is the same dreamy, pensive piano, but with Cave's vocals and a few other instruments on top of it, lending a rock edge to the whole.
"Nocturama" is a good record, but it suffers from following on the heels of "Murder Ballads" which is a modern classic. The songs here are about as upbeat as Cave gets, and there are genuine expressions of love and romance here, albeit with sad twists throughout.
Cave just can't stand to have a happy ending, without some catch. The first song, "Wonderful Life" has a chorus that sums it all up for what is to follow with "It's a wonderful life/If you can find it." Later in "Rock of Gibraltar" the song professes a series of assertions to the strength of love, starting with:
"Let me say this to you
I'll be steadfast and true
And my love will never falter
"The sea would crash about us
The waves would lash about us
I'll be your Rock of Gibraltar."
But by the end, Cave's need for misery slinks back in:
"Could the powers that be
Ever foresee
That things could so utterly alter?
"All the plans that we laid
Could soon be betrayed
Betrayed like the Rock of Gibraltar."
Not even the Rock of Gibraltar is strong enough to withstand Cave's need to see the decay in everything. I don't see this is a negative, however. It is the very fragile nature of love in these songs that make them so powerful. Love is that brief respite from the storm in the midst of life's hurricane. Lyrically, my favourite song is "Still In Love" which I believe is a song about a dead lover looking back on the scene of his death, beginning ominously with a police investigation that suggests he did not die peacefully:
"The cops are hanging around the house
The cars outside look like they've got the blues
The moon don't know if it's day or night
Everybody's creeping around with plastic covers on their shoes
You're making coffee for everyone concerned
Someone points to this and someone points to that
Everyone is saying that you should lie down
But ain't having none of that
And I say to the sleepy summer rain
With a complete absence of pain
You might think I'm crazy
But I'm still in love with you."
For all we know, the object of the dead man's affection is who killed him. In fact, it seems likely as the song progresses. Yet the narrator has an unconditional love, not affected by such comparatively petty things as death and murder. Yes, a 'yikes' moment, but like so many 'yikes' moments from Nick Cave, it works.
Musically, I found the album a little uneven compared to the great records around it chronologically (see above) but still good. He gets his blues/punk groove on with "Dead Man In My Bed" and later with "Babe, I'm On Fire," the requisite fourteen minute epic that most Cave albums feature at some point.
However, most of the album consists of understated, piano driven dirges, and Cave's very underrated, hollowed out, haunting voice, that sounds like an unseen ghost singing up at you from the dark mouth of some chasm (he is aptly named).
I almost gave this record four stars, but there were enough missteps that I knocked it down to three. Notably, while I love the melody and construction of "Rock of Gibraltar" some of the rhymes are forced and unnecessary (notably 'Malta' with 'Gibraltar'). Also, while Cave is the master of the long song, "Babe, I'm On Fire" goes on far too long, and doesn't go anywhere. It is just a laundry list of personalities and occupations that are all equally on fire. An example:
"The wine taster with his nose says it
The fireman with his hose says it
The pedestrian, the equestrian
The tap-dancer with his toes says it
Babe I'm on fire."
And so on for 37 more verses. It is fun the first time, but by the second time around you just want it over with a third of the way in.
Still, a lesser Nick Cave album from this period is still better than most other artists, so I'm not saying you should avoid "Nocturama." I would say it is for completionists only, however.
Best tracks: Wonderful Life, He Wants You, Bring It On, Still In Love, Rock of Gibraltar
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