Shaun de Waal CD of the week
I aint down here for your money, I aint down here for your love, sings Nick Cave on the first song of the new Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (DGR). Im down here for your soul.
Whether playing the hellfire preacher or the devils advocate, Cave brings to rocknroll the whiff of another world, one saturated with the grave rhetoric and poetic violence of the King James Bible. For that matter, God, Jesus, heaven and hell mean something serious to Cave, though maybe not in the way a Ray McCauley, for instance, might hope.
Certainly, for Cave, whose prolific career began with the hectic Australian punk band The Birthday Party, the world is a dark and savage place; or, at any rate, his heart is. He sings about murdering women, whether in Hey Joe (via Jimi Hendrix) or his own Where the Wild Roses Grow, where he brains duet-partner Kylie Minougue with a rock.
Im still not sure how to take these macabre fantasies of Caves, but they do seem a long way from the flippant misogyny of, say, the Stoness Under My Thumb or Some Girls. Caves work (and that includes perhaps the only good novel by a rock star) comes straight out of a tortured subconscious, with the twisted eloquence of an oracle.
Crucially, the voice and the music convice. Caves rich baritone resonates with the sensuality of Elvis and the madness of Iggy Pop; his Bad Seeds backing can be clankingly chaotic or elegantly minimal. On songs such as Into My Arms or The Ship Song, the tenderly lovelorn side of Nick Cave emerges, and its heartbreakingly beautiful.
Soundbites: New CD releases
Hector Berlioz: Les Nuits dt (Sony) Susan Graham gives one of the most beautiful performances of this cycle in many years. Not as overtly sensual as some earlier readings, Grahams reading is full of subtle detail, all revealed in a vocal delivery which is at once luminous and fresh. A treasure. Coenraad Visser
Harry Connick, Jr:To See You (Columbia) Theres often something repellently smug about Junior, supposedly the new Sinatra, but in truth a middle-of-the-road pretender. On this album, his usual slick ebullience has been temporarily banished; in its place there is subdued yearning. He husks his way along in no particular hurry, the backing orchestra whispering as subtly as 108 people can. And it aint bad, even the weird Love Me Some You (Black children hiding me from light/White ones trying to kill me). Hank is being himself and its an improvement. Caroline Sullivan
George Martin:In My Life (Echo) Youre one of the worlds most famous producers, and you decide to have one last pre-retirement fling. You plan an album based on 12 of your classic Beatles tunes, ranging from the title track to A Day in the Life. You decide each song will be performed by one of your all-time heroes … And thats how the revered George Martin ended up with an albums-worth of Goldie Hawn, Robin Williams, Sean Connery, et al (and you dont even want to know what Jim Carrey does to I Am the Walrus). What a legacy for future generations. CS
Pearl Jam:Yield (Epic)Yields predecessors, Vitalogy and No Code, laboured under the curse of trying too hard, but here, Pearl Jam have got it all in focus. Theyre no longer obliged to make every song a breast- beating tirade of adolescent angst, and instead theyve relaxed and allowed their collective strengths to shine. Singer Eddie Vedder has rarely sounded so exposed or accessible as on Wishlist, while Low Light has warm keyboards and homespun harmonies. Adam Sweeting
Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians (Nonesuch) Dont listen to Steve Reichs music if you like a lot of highs and lows. Repetition is his forte; his pieces seem not to move forward, but rather simply to hover. Emerging from American minimalism, and having experimented with phasing and studied Balis gamelan music, Reich finished 18 in 1974. This is the second full recording of a composition in which he does an awful lot with relatively little. Slowly he and his musicians build up a gently pulsing field of sound, layers of rippling percussion and drifts of voice, clarinet, cello and vibraphone. Like nothing youve ever heard before. Shaun de Waal