Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! - Anti-
Filter Grade: 92%
by Sam Roudman | 05.16.2008

Nick Cave is incomparable. There’s just no matching him for the intensity of his nearly 30-year-long confrontation with the likes of love, sex, God, the morality of the West and the grotesquery of the gothic South. That said, he’s had his peaks and valleys, with some of his ’90s work coming across as dark lounge sleaze or a parade of Sopranos theme-song rejects. But given the sky-wide arc of his career all the way back from his post-punk emergence in the romping burlesque of The Birthday Party, Cave’s harder-to-swallow meanderings as a romantic dramatist seem like more of an attempt to hone in than to put one over. The honing is abundantly evident on Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, which should be acknowledged as a highlight in the Bad Seeds 15-album oeuvre. Cave’s themes remain unchanged, but his songcraft prowess continues to grow, aided by the finest instrumental backing and production of any Bad Seeds album to date.

Earlier this decade, it might have seemed that Cave was winding down; the dead-stare swaggering balladeer retreating to his study to question divinity and craft melancholic love songs. 2001’s No More Shall We Part was a peak for the considerate approach, but 2003’s Nocturama creaked with hints of creative atrophy; his voice still strong, but the arrangements staid. When longtime guitarist Blixa Bargeld left in 2003, it seemed Cave would be in an even weaker creative position, but instead he churned out the sprawling double album, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. The first of the two is a brimstone sermon—with Cave’s deep captivations butted-up against a frenzied gospel choir—but the latter served as an elegant tone-down, with its subdued elegiacs and varied folk instrumentals. Then, swerving violently away from those gentle musings, came the formation of last year’s Grinderman outfit, a thematic return to the comically cavorting and carnal form of The Birthday Party, featuring a stripped-down and far nastier version of The Bad Seeds.

    Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! is constructed from the best bits of these last three albums. Nick Launay’s production is festive, dense and dirty, with clanging percussion, old funeral organs, acoustic and electric texturing and a conspicuous synth in its death throes. There’s a fierce vivacity to the whole affair, but restraint as well. “Night of the Lotus Eaters” rests Cave’s lyrics above a muddied and distant guitar that could be a tiny boat bumping the docks in a blind fog. Launay builds tension in Cave’s hummed and whispered apocalypse parable with tape loops, echoing guitars, tabla and colliding drum crashes.

    One of Lazarus’ greatest achievements is the settling of Cave’s tone. The myth-centric tracks from the previous Bad Seeds’ efforts can seem tongue-in-cheek if not farcical, even with the inherent authority present in Cave’s voice. The opening title track, in which Lazarus (“Larry”) wanders through the open thighs of America’s urban gutters, might risk frivolity if it wasn’t so glass-shard clear that every member of the band is in on it, from the dude playing the chainsaw intermittently to the gang shouting the song title in a “Louie, Louie” refrain. Cave the sleaze-dripping-lounge-dweller has met and befriended Cave the religion-and-classics-scholar, resulting in a boon to both.

    “Today’s Lesson” has a big bass line with St. Nick playing the sandman as a lascivious predator undaunted by direct choruses, and “Moonland” is a nocturnal travelogue with a slinky guitar lead allowing Cave’s fever to finally break. Later, “Midnight Man” cuts some “96 Tears”-organ and chirping guitar weirdness into the mix.

    Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! also shows Cave developing a talent for the anthemic chorus. “Albert Goes West” is a road escape ditty with gang “sha-la-las,” “whoo-oohs,” a slamming backbeat, tambourine and ecstatic squall of guitar that burns like the sun hitting a hangover. “Hold On To Yourself” and “Lie Down Here” move from the lounge in favor of the saloon, with Warren Ellis’ frenzied fiddle and flute holding everything down, and a blazing ache of guitar cementing the latter. “We Call Upon the Author” is the centerpiece of the album, a perfect Cave God rant-cum-literary complaint. His cadence at its most manic, Cave calls out the ills produced from the sick “author’s” brain, while his steady tirade is cut by breaks of wheezing, ancient-sounding synth.

    Nick Cave has been prolific across the board these last years, also releasing a collection of his poetry, writing the screenplay for The Proposition and scoring two soundtracks with Warren Ellis. Perhaps this is why he sounds so spent on Lazarus’ closing track, “More News From Nowhere,” shedding his persona over eight minutes of home-searching rumination. In this peak, the 30 years of metaphoric obfuscation seem to have taken their toll on Cave, but if that’s what it takes to create albums as rich, varied, and truly felt as this, then we should only hope for 30 more.