Murder Ballads

In his trademark bottomless voice, Nick Cave narrates one tragic, violent tale after another. In excruciating detail, he examines the fine apects of murder, varying viewpoints between victims and killers, and investigating the dialogue between them from many angles. MURDER BALLADS, his ninth release with the Bad Seeds, is Cave at his most raw and lyrical. more...

He delves unflinchingly into macabre territory with the backing of his band's spare, moaning, reverb-rich playing--by turns sweetly tuneful and disjointedly dirge-like. PJ Harvey assumes the role of a woman scorned on "Henry Lee", in which she describes stabbing to death the man who rejects her. Her story is interspersed with choruses of, "La la la la la/La la la la lee/A little bird lit down on Henry Lee", adding a sense of perverse humor to the ballad's bleakness. On "Where the Wild Roses Grow", a man kills his lover, explaining that "all beauty must die", and Kylie Minogue provides the innocent, breathy voice of the dead lover with a ghostly, haunting softness. Yet amid the troubling, startling brutality runs a sense of fragility and a poetic lyricism that makes these songs linger.

Melody Maker (12/21-28/96, pp.66-67)
- Ranked #16 on Melody Maker's list of 1996's `Albums Of The Year.'

NME (12/21-28/96, pp.66-67)
- Ranked #7 in NME's 1996 critic's poll.

Rolling Stone (3/21/96, p.96)
- 4 Stars - Excellent - "...never before have manic elements elevated Cave's shtick to art as on MURDER BALLADS....literate, sultry and tortured....the performance of Nick Cave's life..."

New York Times (2/11/96, Sec.2, p.30)
- "...MURDER BALLADS is about more than storytelling. In each song, Mr. Cave meticulously creates a macabre fable and then distills it to a single image of death in much the way a photographer arranges a studio shoot..."

Q (3/96, p.93)
- 3 Stars - Good - "...Musically, the Bad Seeds touch on tinkling cabaret jazz, country-paced morbidity and every morose station between..."

Mojo (5/01, p.46)
- "More deaths than a Sam Peckinpah movie. Co-stars Polly Harvey and Kylie Minogue..."

Melody Maker (1/27/96, p.33)
- Recommended - "...the most avowedly grim in purpose of all Cave's records....also the funniest....It dips its toes into all manner of styles. Cave is a stranger to none of them, but many would--rightly--be considered unacceptable coming from anyone else..."

NME (2/3/96, p.44)
- 7 (out of 10)
- "...grotesque, horrifying, and vaudevillian all at once, an uphill slog you would be hard pressed to term `entertainment"....[Cave's] baritone doesn't sound disgusted or repulsed, just...cold and diapassionate...so the tables are turned on the listener..."

Entertainment Weekly (3/8/96, p.66)
- "Not for the squeamish, this is the rare pop record that resonates with the weight of the ages..." - Rating: B+

Option (3-4/96, p.89)
- "...On MURDER BALLADS, Cave offers literary devices that separate good murder ballads from gratuitous cheap thrills..."