This is my least favourite Nick Cave album. Something about it seems unrelentingly homogeneous. I don't mind lots of songs about murder, but surely not all murderers are priapic sociopaths? They seem to be on this album; even the women. I know it doesn't fit with Nick's Old Testament schtick, but I'd like to have this balanced with some of the quiet, unplanned killings that get triggered by circumstance. Then there's the problem with the Tarantinoed violence, which I've already gone on about repeatedly in connection with Johnny Cash and Mississippi John Hurt.
I don't mind the priapism per se, but I think Cave has done it with more wit — as on Grinderman album. And with more panache: on the earlier song Red Right Hand, NC didn't feel the need to spell out his references and provide a "further reading" list, but this time he wants to spoon feed us with the Paradise Lost citation.
Redemption arrives with the final track, a cover of Bob's Death is not the End with guest vocal contributions from the likes of Shane MacGowan, PJ Harvey and Blixa Bargeld. It's life-affirming in a "We Are The (End of the) World" kind of way.
And there's another reason to be forgiving, for apparently in the gaps of recording this album Nick was writing the quite sublime Boatman's Call.
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