Abattoir Blues
1-1 	Get Ready For Love 	5:05
1-2 	Cannibal's Hymn 	4:54
1-3 	Hiding All Away 	6:31
1-4 	Messiah Ward 	5:14
1-5 	There She Goes, My Beautiful World 	5:17
1-6 	Nature Boy 	4:54
1-7 	Abattoir Blues 	3:58
1-8 	Let The Bells Ring 	4:26
1-9 	Fable Of The Brown Ape 	2:45

The Lyre Of Orpheus
2-1 	The Lyre Of Orpheus 	5:36
2-2 	Breathless 	3:13
2-3 	Babe, You Turn Me On 	4:21
2-4 	Easy Money 	6:43
2-5 	Supernatura5
2-7 	Carry Me 	3:37
2-8 	O Children 	6:51

Bass – Martyn P. Casey
Drums, Percussion – Jim Sclavunos, Thomas Wydler
Guitar [Guitars] – Mick Harvey
Organ – James Johnston
Piano – Conway Savage
Violin, Mandolin, Bouzouki, Flute – Warren Ellis
Vocals – Ase Bergstrom, Donovan Lawrence, Geo Onayomake, Lena Palmer, Stephanie Meade, Wendy Rose
Vocals, Piano – Nick Cave 

Enough time has passed to be straight without fear of fan retaliation: 2003’s Nocturama was a misstep for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Though not a terrible record, it paled woefully when compared to what’d preceded it: several albums of nonpareil, damaged and daring rock music, a kind both emotion-stirring and crotch-clutching, from a band firmly contumacious to compromise.

Nocturama didn’t wholly lose the plot, but certainly capitulated to cliché. Which made its successor, the double-disc, two-albums-in-one set of 2004’s Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus, all the more remarkable. Perhaps Cave and company knew what they had in wait; that it’d be special enough to surpass whatever preceded it; that putting out a weaker disc in advance would only increase its impact, heighten critical intrigue and benefit subsequent examinations. If so, bravo gentlemen – it worked a treat.

Rightfully feted by a plethora of publications upon its release, these 17 tracks found Cave in imperious form, creativity running clean while the summoning of traits that’d helped define his career is treated with consideration for progression – there’s little revivalism here, few nods to past glories. Instead, the albums spark with a vibrancy that’d soon carry into the Grinderman set-up, and ring with a classic melancholy-versus-malevolence vibe as timeless as any favourites previously released under the Bad Seeds banner.

Reduced to the very simplest exposition, Abattoir Blues is the fast and furious record, Lyre the slower, seductive offering; but neither really plays things straight, the latter’s Supernaturally a sprightly saunter of a love song, the former’s Let the Bells Ring a lugubrious laudation of a passing. Abattoir’s opener, Get Ready for Love, crackles with an energy that’d be felt again four years later on 2008’s Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!. The title track shudders with a lyrical moroseness – “Everything’s dissolving, babe” – but is lifted from a sullen repose by sweet, soulful backing vocals. Not that wallowing in Cave’s misery is to be avoided. Lyre’s titular opener, meanwhile, is a spectacle of storytelling which has one wondering how Cave’s novel-writing endeavours have, to date, failed to emulate his music-world achievements.

Two great albums, then, and recorded both fast – in under two weeks – and without the previously pivotal Blixa Bargeld, whose departure could have foreshadowed failure. But under Cave’s consistently accomplished marshalling, the Bad Seeds are always capable of overturning the odds, and this is the sweetest affirmation of that trait to date. ---Mike Diver, BBC Review

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1. "Do You Love Me?" – 5:56 
2. "Nobody's Baby Now" – 3:52 
3. "Loverman" – 6:21 
4. "Jangling Jack" – 2:47 
5. "Red Right Hand" – 6:10 
6. "I Let Love In" – 4:14 
7. "Thirsty Dog" – 3:48 
8. "Ain't Gonna Rain Anymore" – 3:46 
9. "Lay Me Low" – 5:08 
10. "Do You Love Me? Pt 2" – 6:12

Backing Vocals – Blixa Bargeld (tracks: 3, 8, 10), Bad Seeds, The* (tracks: 1, 4, 7, 9)
Bass – Martyn P. Casey
Drums – Thomas Wydler (tracks: 1 to 3, 5 to 10)
Guitar – Blixa Bargeld, Mick Harvey (tracks: 1 to 9)
Organ – Mick Harvey (tracks: 2, 4, 6), Nick Cave (tracks: 1, 3, 5, 7 to 9)
Piano – Conway Savage (tracks: 2 to 4, 6, 9)
Vocals – Nick Cave

Keeping the same line-up from Henry's Dream, Nick Cave and company turn in yet another winner with Let Love In. Compared to Henry's Dream, Let Love In is something of a more produced effort -- longtime Cave boardsman Tony Cohen oversees things, and from the first track, one can hear the subtle arrangements and carefully constructed performances. Love, unsurprisingly, takes center stage of the album. Besides concluding with a second part to "Do You Love Me?," two of its stronger cuts are the (almost) title track "I Let Love In," and "Loverman," an even creepier depiction of lust's throttling power so gripping that Metallica ended up covering it. On the full-on explosive front, "Jangling Jack" sounds like it wants to do nothing but destroy sound systems, strange noises and overmodulations ripping throughout the song. The Seeds can always turn in almost deceptively peaceful performances as well, of course -- standouts here are "Nobody's Baby Now," with a particularly lovely guitar/piano line, and the brooding drama of "Ain't Gonna Rain Anymore." The highlight of the album, though, has little to do with love and everything to do with the group's abilities at music noir. "Red Right Hand" depicts a nightmarish figure emerging on "the edge of town," maybe a criminal and maybe something more demonic. Cave's vicious lyric combines fear and black humor perfectly, while the Seeds' performance redefines "cinematic," a disturbing organ figure leading the subtle but crisp arrangement and Harvey's addition of a sharp bell ratcheting up the feeling of doom and judgment. ---Ned Raggett, AllMusic Review

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1. We No Who U R 4:05
2. Wide Lovely Eyes 3:40
3. Water's Edge 3:49
4. Jubilee Street 6:36
5. Mermaids 3:49
6. We Real Cool 4:18
7. Finishing Jubilee Street 4:28
8. Higgs Boson Blues 7:50
9. Push The Sky Away 4:09

Personnel:
Nick Cave – vocals, piano, organ, harmonica, percussion, electric guitar
Thomas Wydler – drums, percussion, vocals 
Martyn P. Casey – bass, vocals 
Conway Savage – piano, organ, vocals 
Jim Sclavunos – percussion, drums, organ, melodica, vocal
Warren Ellis – violin, keyboards, percussion,  vocals

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds re-emerge with Push the Sky Away, the first recording by this band since 2008. Produced by Nick Launay, the album was recorded at La Fabrique, a studio built inside a 19th century mansion in southern France. The two video singles, “We No Who U R” and “Jubilee Street,” are both darkly beautiful ballads that harken back to the Boatman’s Call and No More Shall We Part, and also contain various loops and electronic textures by the band’s musical director, Warren Ellis. The Bad Seeds advanced the album with a brief documentary on YouTube. ---allmusic.com

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1.Dig Lazarus dig 
2.Toodays lesson 
3.Moonland 
4.Night of the Lotus Eaters 
5.Albert goes west 
6.We call upon the author 
7.Hold on to yourself 
8.Lie down here and be my girl 
9.Jesus of the moon 
10.Midnight man 
11.More news from nowhere

Nick Cave – Vocals, Organ, Piano, Tambourine, Sleigh Bells, Toms, Harmonica, Electric Guitar, Vibra-Slap
Martyn P. Casey – Bass
Thomas Wydler – Brushed Snare, Shaker, Tambourine, Drums, Hand Drums
Warren Ellis – Viola, Loops, Fender Mandocaster, Tenor Guitar, Maracas, 12 String Lute, Drum Machine, Piano, Flute, Mandolin
Mick Harvey – Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Bass, Organ)
Jim Sclavunos – Drums, Bongos, Cowbell, Cuica, Congas, Finger Cymbals, Shaker, Maracas, Tambourine, Sleigh Bells
James Johnston – Organ, Electric Guitar

Apparently, the Bad Seeds side project Grinderman injected some serious adrenaline into the equation, evidenced mightily on Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! This is the 14th album by Nick Cave and company. After the masterpiece that was Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus in 2004, Cave and Warren Ellis scored a pair of films -- The Proposition and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and recorded the self-titled Grinderman album with other bandmembers Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos. Grinderman was a howling, raucous, rock & roll racket of a set that sweat humorous garage rock blues and raw shambolic guttersnipe stroll that spread its nasty cheer to the listener. The return of the full-on Bad Seeds octet builds on this energy and emerges with an album that is at once snarling, darkly humorous, decadently sexual, and, if you are a religious Christian person, seemingly blasphemous. An obvious example is the title track that opens the album. As always, Cave's lyrics are at the center. They are the focus whether he wants them to be or not, and they certainly are here. The track kicks off with a low-end, loose-limbed bass slog and snarling guitar swagger that simultaneously recall Link Wray and Johnny Thunders. Cave re-introduces the biblical character that Jesus raised from the dead as Larry. Larry gets resurrected in the 21st century. He is utterly lost as he rambles about, utterly disoriented and wondering why the hell he was woken from his dream sleep in the first place. (Think Martin Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ set in the current day with its Lazarus stumbling around half blind and lost, one foot here, one in the next world.) Larry, who no longer has a sense of who or where he is, partakes of every greasy pleasure known -- sex, dope, violence -- and ends up in the joint, and eventually homeless before ending up back in his hole in the ground. Cave wryly explains at the end, "poor Larry." There are bullhorn sounds in the backdrop, sheer noise wafting in from the margins, and the band pumping itself up with every verse. Cave talks more than he sings here, he's reciting something that feels free form but it's rhythmically dead-on and very tightly focused.

Tracy Pew of the Birthday Party could have played the bass rumble that introduces "Today's Lesson." It's all popping riff, one line played over and over as the band brings out organs, acoustic and electric guitars, Ellis playing an electric mandolin, and Cave offering the tale of a young woman who wakes from a dream with a jawbone stuck inside the waistband of her jeans like a gun, who has been repeatedly violated in her sleep by the sandman; when she wakes up all hell breaks loose in the form of a "real good time tonite." She's ready to party, to get while the getting's good -- you are free to interpret whatever that might be.

Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! isn't all clamorous craziness, however. For starters, it's not as raw as Grinderman. Nick Launay reins it in while extending the textural and dimensional reach of the Bad Seeds wonderfully rootsy yet complex and swampy sound. There are many different kinds of songs here, like the creepy crawly "Night of the Lotus Eaters" that feels like Night of the Living Dead meets Hammer studios meets the Voodoo Gods of Haiti on 'ludes and cheap wine. It's dark, sinister, slimy, and addictive. "Albert Goes West" suggests the Dream Syndicate at their wildest with squalling guitars. When he says "The light upon the rainy streets/Offers Many Reflections/And I won't be held responsible/for my actions..." only to the same protagonist asks in a Concord bar "Do you wanna dance?/Do you wanna groove?" He means it. It's not as absurd as it sounds and in the context of his character, it's unhinged. When the band screams, crunches, and squeals out of the tuner in its music, they sweetly sing like drunken devilish doo wop boys meeting "Sha La La," right to the fade. Only Cave could get away with lines like "Our myomixtoid kids spraddle the streets/we've shunned them from the greasy grind/the poor things/They look so sad & old/As they mount us from behind...." and "I go guruing down the street/young people gather round my feet/as me things-but I don't know where to start." All the while the band chants "doop doop doop" behind him.

In "We Call Upon the Author," Cave has become a cross between the great 20th century poets of history and the outer edges of mental myths like Charles Olson and John Berryman who happen to play rock & roll. The latter of these writers is celebrated in the same tune for writing like "wet papier mache/and going out the "Heming-way." This occurs a mere line after he castigates the late Charles Bukowski for being a jerk. "Hold on to Yourself" brings the swirling cacophony the Bad Seeds can summon live with Ellis playing an electric viola along with a pulsing Farfisa organ and acoustic and electric guitars atop sparse drums. It's a sad love song that might have been a rock outtake from The Assassination of Jesse James, if Jesse were singing it in the current era: "I'm so far away from you/I'm pacing up and down my room/Does Jesus only love a man who loses?" The cinematic reach of the track is alternately heartbroken, lost, and furious. "Lie Down Here (And Be My Girl") is feverish, nightmarish, desperate, and as elegantly ruined and unrepentant as Nikolai in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Amid the soaring guitars, a backdrop of old rock & roll chorus lines, psychedelic fuzztone leads, and that propulsive bassline and popping snare, Cave's protagonist exhorts his beloved not to worry about the life pouring out of him, and just take in the moment as an eternal one, where all comes down and rises at once. Ellis' moaning Gypsy violin, electric mandolin, a spooky Mick Harvey piano, and a one-two rhythm section shuffle offer another dark and hopeless love song in "Jesus of the Moon," but its drama and punch are almost theatrical in scope. It's dead serious, no camp here; it's all passion, pathos, and an unwillingness to let go despite the fact of having already done so. The last line in the song is, "I say hello." One wonders to what? The abandoned lover? Oblivion? With "More News from Nowhere," the album closes uncharacteristically on what may seem at first to be a light moment. Musically and lyrically it walks the line between Bob Dylan's wry, bluesy, sprawling observations on 21st century life and the light, sarcastic celebration of decadence in Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side."

What it all comes down to is that Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is a Bad Seeds record that ups the ante once again. The elegance and poetry, the drama and tension of Cave's more poetic notions are balanced by his Sade-ian humor and social criticisms and his willingness to blend flesh and spirit as two sides of the same coin. Along with this comes a band's sound that is incredibly evolved and unself-conscious. It's an album where a fire breathing, rootsy, garage rock band creates a soundtrack to modern fun house life: where the stakes are high, the odds are hopelessly stacked, and there is little left to do but laugh at its dreadful irony. ---Thom Jurek, AllMusic Review

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1	Song Of Joy 	6:47
2	Stagger Lee 	5:15
3	Henry Lee 	3:58
4	Lovely Creature 	4:13
5	Where The Wild Roses Grow 	3:57
6	The Curse Of Millhaven 	6:55
7	The Kindness Of Strangers 	4:39
8	Crow Jane 	4:14
9	O'Malley's Bar 	14:28
10	Death Is Not The End 	4:27

Jenny Anderson 	Violin
Blixa Bargeld 	Guitar, Sound Effects, Vocals, Voices
Katharine Blake 	Choir/Chorus, Vocals
Martyn Casey 	Bass, Choir/Chorus, Guitar (Bass), Vocals
Nick Cave 	Arranger, Choir/Chorus, Guitar, Organ, Organ (Hammond), Piano, Sound Effects, String Arrangements, Vocals
Liz Corcoran 	Vocals
Kerran Coulter 	Viola
Mariella del Conte 	Vocals
Terry Edwards 	Horn
Warren Ellis 	Accordion, Choir/Chorus, Violin, Vocals
Dave Graney 	Choir/Chorus, Vocals
Mick Harvey 	Arranger, Bass, Drums, Guitars, Organ, Percussion, Space Belt, String Arrangements, Vocals (Background)
PJ Harvey 	 Vocals
Brian Hooper 	Bass, Choir/Chorus, Vocals
Rowland S. Howard 	Choir/Chorus, Vocals
Geri Johnson 	Choir/Chorus, Vocals
Ian Johnson 	Choir/Chorus
James Johnston 	Choir/Chorus, Vocals
Spencer P. Jones 	Choir/Chorus, Vocals
Anita Lane 	Sound Effects, Vocals
Shane MacGowan 	Guest Artist, Vocals
Kylie Minogue 	Guest Artist, Vocals
Clare Moore 	Choir/Chorus, Vocals
Helen Mountfort 	Cello
Astrid Munday 	Choir/Chorus, Vocals
Hugo Race 	Guitar
Conway Savage 	Choir/Chorus, Organ, Piano, Vocals, Vocals (Background)
James Sclavunos 	Bells, Drums, Percussion, Tambourine
Sue Simpson 	Violin
Thomas Wydler 	Choir/Chorus, Drums, Maracas, Tambourine, Trombone, Vocals 

In some ways, Murder Ballads is the record Nick Cave was waiting to make his entire career. Death and violence have always haunted his music, even when he wasn't explicitly singing about the subject. On Murder Ballads, he sings about nothing but death in the most gruesome, shocking fashion. Divided between originals and covers, the record is awash in both morbid humor and sobering horror, as the Bad Seeds provide an appropriate backdrop for the carnage, alternating between blues, country, and lounge-jazz. Opening the affair is "Song for Joy," a tale from a father who has witnessed his family's death at the hands of serial killer. It is the most disturbing number on the record, lacking any of the gallows humor that balances out the other songs. Cave's duets with Kylie Minogue ("Where the Wild Roses Grow") and PJ Harvey ("Henry Lee") are intriguing, but the true tours de force of the album are "Stagger Lee" and "O'Malley's Bar." Working from an obscure, vulgar variation on "Stagger Lee," Cave increases the sordidness of the song, making Stagger an utterly irredeemable character. The original "O'Malley's Bar" is even stronger, as he spins a bizarrely funny epic of one man's slaughter of an entire bar. During "O'Malley's Bar," Cave and the Bad Seeds are at the height of their powers and the performances rank among the best they have ever recorded. ---Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AllMusic Review

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