For a couple of decades, I--like many of my friends--was an album guy. Sure, I'd read and loved Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made and Spin's and Rolling Stone's greatest singles issues* (the issues released in the '80s; I'm sure they've released a couple since, but if I've read them, I don't remember), but for the most part, I believed in the LP as the height of musical artistic achievement, an album to a single being what the novel was to a short story: lengthier, therefore more complex, therefore more artistic merit, right? Wrong. I was an idiot for a long time.** Still, even if I would have believed back then that the single was just as great (if not greater***) as the album, I still would have been an album guy. Why? Proximity.
After the cassingle started appearing (and as quickly disappeared), 45s started slipping from shelves, and the single was done, the spindle tossed in the trash. If I wanted to hear new music, I had to buy the album...so I did. I bought my weight in wax (or tape) a week. The onset of CDs didn't change my habit. Working at a radio station, however, did change my mindset, as I listened to every new**** pop, rock, R&B, rap, hip-hop, gospel, and country track that was released every week, and most of the great ones never appeared on a great album. I then began to be much more discriminating in my tastes, reading every review I could before I'd spend chunks of money on rotten records. Still, if an artist I admired released a record, I'd buy it on the spot, and at least half the time, I'd regret my purchase, because other than the Beatles, nobody hits (or hit) it out of the park every time.
It was because of this disappointing track record with some of my favorite artists (Prince, Springsteen, R.E.M., etc...) that I bought a computer*****, roughly ten years ago, and from there, I discovered the wonderful world of downloa....uh...uh...of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds! I'd only heard one of their songs before. It was "I'll Love You Till the End of the World" from the wonderful soundtrack to the dreary and dull and endless Wim Wenders 1991 film Untill The End of the World. In that song, Cave & co. displayed many of their typical trademarks (which have inspired, among others, My Chemical Romance and H.I.M.) : heavy on strings, apocalyptic lyrics, heavy romanticism, and Cave's theatrical vocals that landed just this side of camp. It was full of pomp and circumstance, and I loved it (and I still do, too). I then went searching record stores for more from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, but none had any. The store managers all said that they could import****** them for me, but I didn't want to have to pay the extra shipping fees for I had little money, then*******. I waited and bided my time, hoping someday I'd find Henry's Dream and Let Love In as well as the back records. Five years I waited, and nothing. Until....
One day (five years later), I found the band's Murder Ballads at Wal-Mart.******** It was righteous, as it sparked my inner Goth. The next year, another album, The Boatman's Call...even better. Great. Superb. 'Twas nothing like the previous album, a complete turnaround from lascivious to lush, from fighter to lover, with a stately, standout opening track. Four years roll 'round, Cave releases another album, and I never knew of it. By this point, I had my computer, and I'd stopped my subscription to Rolling Stone, so--somehow--I missed it (found it later, though). It wasn't until 2003 that I bought a new Cave record, the one I thought was the first one he'd released since The Boatman's Call. I saw it at Wal-Mart, and I bought it. I didn't bother with browsing reviews or downloading the tracks (which would've taken me forever back then, on dial-up); it was a Nick Cave record, the last two were great, so this one was bound to be as well.
I was wrong. The 2003 record--Nocturama--was a dreary slog. The romanticism, the lush arrangements were there, but the melodies weren't. The songs seemed too similar to the ones on The Boatman's Call. It was too derivative, and it was uninspired. After listening to it once, I found some critical reviews of the album, and most of the reviews marched step with my ideas. "That's it," I told myself, "no more albums for me without reading the rushes first." I put the album away. Cave released another album the next year, but it received mixed reviews, so I didn't bother with it. In 2006, though, he put out an album with Grinderman (which was actually the Bad Seeds minus one or two members), and I listened to a few tracks, and they were great, so I bought the album. I wasn't disappointed this time. Inspired, I then went to iTunes and bought a slew of individual Cave tracks, and I aimed to make myself a 3-CD compilation of Nick Cave tunes, arranging them in chronological order (of course). In preparation, I listened to Nocturama for only the second time since I'd bought it three years prior, and guess what? The album still stunk...except for one track.
The track was--obviously--this one: "Right Out of Your Hand." The music is stately and romantic, with Cave's piano and Bad Seeds' Blixa Bargeld's pedal steel and (especially) Warren Elllis's violin creating a landscape of longing, the power coming from the impassioned reserve in Cave's and Mick Harvey's and Conway Savage's singing. It's lush only in its eroticism, as it smolders and builds, as it seethes and pulses slowly, the releases determined and deliberate and delayed, as these musicians exert expert control, not allowing anything to be rushed, allowing intimacy but not withholding passion. By taking their time with this beautiful melody, Cave & the Bad Seeds made their best record this decade, one that still gives reason to believe that the truly great artists, though they may falter a time or two, can create great art at anytime throughout their careers, and that they are never to be dismissed, their albums not ignored, no matter how the first go 'round may sound. Buy only the singles and risk missing some of the greatest work of a great artist's career. I almost did this time. "Right Out of Your Hand" was never released as a single, no video ever recorded, never been added to a soundtrack. It's an album cut, but it sure ain't filler music.
NOTES
* I don't think there any two lists of similar subject matter published by, uh, similar publications that are as widely divergent as these lists were.
** Yeah, I know. Don't say it.
*** And the single is greater, too.
****I also listened to, I think, every one of the 45s the station had, both sides, and they had a bunch, and I can tell you that if you think music is strange now, you should have heard some of the off-the-wall (not the Michael Jackson album, mind you) B-sides (and A-sides, too) released from the late '60s through the mid-'70s, before arena rock and FM radio completely changed the landscape of radio forever. Really weird stuff by some people who had no business making a record of any sort. You think artists like Jessica Simpson and Lady Gaga (etc...) are talentless? Well, you ain't heard nothin', yet.
*****My word processor finally breaking beyond repair might also have had something to do with the computer purchase. Might.
******Later I discovered that the Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' albums were distributed in America, too, and that these record stores wouldn't have to import them, but they just told customers that so that they wouldn't have to go through the hassle of special-ordering an album that they hadn't heard of.
*******Still don't today, either.
********Ironic, that of all of Cave's work, the first one to appear at Wal-Mart--notorious (among music junkies, at least) for their censorship and wariness to stock even the slightest controversial album--was the one entitled Murder Ballads.
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