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CD reviews

The Good Son

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - The Good Son Audio CD

A fair review of the Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds "The Good Son" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds reviews here, or go back to the Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds tabs.

Band: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Title: The Good Son
Rating:

Release Date: 1996-02-13
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Foi Na Cruz 2: Good Son 3: Sorrow's Child 4: Weeping Song 5: Ship Song 6: Hammer Song 7: Lament 8: Witness Song 9: Lucy

the coming of age album

yes,indeed,prior to this album,there has been so many glimpses of cave's obsession with love,death and sorrow (but mostly love in all its manifestations). whilst i write this review with the benefit of having observed how nick caves's music has developed since the release of this,the "good son" album,is it with a feeling of justification that the album is described as the coming of age album.
on this album,from the opening track,"fois na cruz" with the sad tale of love lost,(love came knocking,when sadly she didnt live there any more),is the scene set for an experience in what it means to love, to hurt and to lose in love. if one bears in mind that cave addressed universities and scholars on the subject of the love poem,does it make all the more sense.
as is to be expected, the music on this album is some of the best work produced by the bad seeds and contributes in exemplary fashion to the album's mood.
it is extremely difficult to identify any given track as the standout track on this album,but the opener,"sorrow's child","come sail ur ships around me" and "the weeping song" atand along side any of cave's finest work.

High point in Nick Cave career
The album works well as a collective, with the two most prominent tracks 'The Weeping Song' and 'The Ship Song' going on to become Nick Cave standards which all his other ballads have been measured to. An often overlooked album by fans of Cave's more recent work, this album is pretty much a blueprint for many Nick Cave albums to follow. Certainly a high point in his recording career, although true commercial success was to come a few years later. A great album for any fan of Nick Cave.

O Lord the songs come down...
But then the title track rolls in and the on-stage-dark-rock-preacher Cave is back. "The Good son" opens with a song ("Foi na cruz") that's so easily forgettable that you can't quite believe that it's Nick Cave here. Stormy, thundering, preaching, "The Good son" is what "The Mercy seat" was on the "Tender prey" album, and what "Tupelo" was on "The firstborn is dead": a classic, a mind bender, a face-busting, crowd-mangling hailstorm.

After that three neat, almost too neat sounding slow songs creep in: "Sorrow's child" (. . . sits by the river / Sorrow's child / hears not the water. . . "), "The ship song" (praised by many and sometimes called one of Cave's most outstanding ballads, which I definitly must deny here) and "The Hammer song", on which the mesmerising, dark voice of singer Cave is used almost to the point that it feels exploited - and you expect him on this track to explode somewhere in vein, to burst out and hammer a chorus of faul language and eye-gouging madness on us all, but in fact he never does, and in this case, it causes a possitive effect: Nick still isn't predictable or obvious. "The Hammer song" does anything but end with a crushing hammer slash.

I between these three songs there is the instant-classic sing-along piece "The weeping song", a melodramatic duet, almost a play, between Nick Cave and backing vocalist / guitar player Blixa Bargeld.

But then the extasy is over, and the album offers three more quite, introvert songs to get trough, and non of them really tend to stick.
This is often a problem with Nick Cave ballads, some of them really get to you ("Mercy" on "Tender prey", "Stranger than kindness" on "Your funeral. . . my trial", "Do you love me (Part 2)" on "Let love in" and about all tracks on the near perfect "No more shall we part") but a lot of them just don't stick, they do not twist and turn inside your head, they just ponder and wander on, you hear them and after they're finished, you nod and say "thank you" and then you go on with your life without having the feeling anything really happened.

This album really has too much of these "on going things" without really hurting you, which a good Nick Cave ballad does, and thank God for that, because that's really what we want from the man; to get hurt, to get hit in the right spot, straight in the heart, straight through our deceptively sane minds.

But that doesn't mean it's all blund and "just on going" - there's still the instant-classic sing-along piece, the dark mesmerising voice exploiting surprise, and the Cavian mind bender. And when these come from the dark echoing throat of The One Lord Nick Cave, you know you really get something.
.

One of Cave's best

I like this album a lot - and it has grown and grown on me over the years. If you like "No More Shall We Part" then this is for you - its in that approximate mode of Cave+Bad Seeds music. Lyrics like "love came a-knockin', came a-knockin' at our door. But you, you and me dear, we don't live there anymore". Ouch. Much better as he sings it too.

I was a little worried when I first played it - there's a terrible buzz from the first strum of the guitar on the first song!!

Great album though.

would give it 5 stars but it his not his best
Tne more I listen to him, the more I am convinced that he is one of the MAJOR figures in the history of rock. I love Nick Cave's music, whether with the Bad Seeds or Birthday Party. He has it all: great presence, commanding and capable voice, powerful instrumental backup, truly orignial lyrics and enough variety in his music to make you want to hear everything that he has done. The Good Son's boasts a number of piano-driven pieces that make this CD from the others, but the songs do not rank up there with his greats. Nevertheless, do not hesitate to get this CD if you like Nick Cave. He is a giant and I cannot wait for his new CD Nocturama to come out.

You can see a complete list of all Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds discography, or go back to the Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.