NICK CAVE
And No More Shall We Part
Mute
There are two Nick Caves – the angry prophet of the apocalyptic blues and the sorrowful balladeer. Correspondingly, there are two groups of Nick Cave fans – those who felt The Boatman's Call was his worst album to date, and those who thought it his best. Neither group is going to be entirely happy with his latest effort, a collection of love songs set in a doom laden landscape, performed with a larger ensemble than usual – not exactly the Bad Seeds, but hardly intimate either. That's part of the problem: you don't feel the earth shake on the big fire & brimstone numbers, nor do you feel close on the confessional pieces.
You sense the electricity when the McGarrigle sisters’ backing vocals kick in, but that's none too often, and the lyrics are occasionally clunky, sometimes worse ("Love letter, love letter, go get her, go get her"?!).
Yet the vision is still persuasive, and if he's not quite the inheritor of Blake and Faulkner that some would have us believe, neither is he just Leonard Cohen for goths, no matter how close he comes to this on a couple of tracks here.
A transitional album then, trying to reconcile the conflicting claims of hope and paranoia, Eros and Jehovah. No surprises, and no betrayals.
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