Boards
Nick Cave - best years behind him?
Now look here - I'm a big fan of Nick Cave (and the Bad Seeds) and have seen him live 5 times (2 with Bad Seeds, 3 times solo). So when the announcement about new dates was made I was initally very excited.
Then I thought about the last Bad Seeds gig where they played ALL of Abbatoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheous and only a handful of the usual Cave songs in the encore. Now i'm not a big fan of AB/Lyre at all - overblown and only occasionally on a par with his best - so the gig was a big disappointment.
Personally I feel The Boatman's Call is his peak as he had such a fantastically dark and vicious catalogue behind him then released a genuinely moving/beautiful LP. Everything since seems to have been a re-tread (albeit often very good) with nothing up there with Tender Prey, Henry's Dream or TBC.
Maybe the new album will be amazing but it seems to me that Nick Cave has become critically untouchable because he is pretty much peerless (even when he releases pale imitations of earlier triumphs).
(Basically I'm just whinging because I've blown my chance to ever see him play The Ballad of Robert Moore and Betty Coltrane, Up Jumped the Devil, I Had a Dream Joe, John Finn's Wife, Stranger than Kindness and The Carny ok???)