Murder Ballads by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Murder Ballads is the ninth studio album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, released in 1996 on Mute Records. As its title suggests, the album consists of new and traditional murder ballads, a genre of songs that relays the details (and often consequences) of crimes of passion. "Where the Wild Roses Grow," a duet featuring Cave singing with Kylie Minogue, was a hit single and received two ARIA Awards in 1996. Other prominent guest musicians on the album include PJ Harvey and Shane MacGowan. Murder Ballads is the band's biggest commercial success to date, most likely helped by the unexpected repeated airplay of the "Where the Wild Roses Grow" video on MTV. MTV even nominated Cave for their "best male artist" award of that year, though this nomination was later withdrawn at Cave's request.
At least 65 men, women, children and animals are gruesomely laid to rest on Nick Cave’s 1996 LP. Traditional murder ballads—bluesy, romanticised snuff stories, where even the sweetest melody spits out blood and bullets—are so quintessentially, definitively Nick Cave, it’s hard to imagine his persona without them. And while, decades later, an album overflowing with gratuitous assault might generally be considered unacceptable, if anyone possesses the storytelling prowess to get away with it, it’s him. By the mid-’90s, the Australian artist’s identity was already built around lurking in dark, mysterious musical corners and poeticising the macabre, but never so intensely or graphically as here. Following 1994’s masterful <i>Let Love In</i>, here, love was certainly allowed <i>in</i>, but with a morbid, inevitable catch. On <i>Murder Ballads</i>, Cave doesn’t just create these exceptionally bloodthirsty killers (or revive those from the traditional songs he reimagines, including “Stagger Lee” and “Henry Lee”)—he wholly embodies them. Hear how he snarls on opener “Song of Joy”, portraying a father whose wife and three children are slaughtered by a serial killer (possibly himself) who paints John Milton quotes on the wall in blood. It’s terrifying, and enthralling. Some characters are quick to anger, like Stagger Lee, who shoots a bartender in the head four times for mouthing off. Others commit crimes of passion: PJ Harvey portrays a woman who murders Cave’s Henry Lee because he loves another. On the delicate delicate duet “Where the Wild Roses Grow”—his biggest hit to date—he woos Kylie Minogue’s Elisa Day before smashing her head in with a rock: “I kissed her goodbye, said, ‘All beauty must die’/And lent down and planted a rose between her teeth.” The serene gothic scene is a stark contrast to “The Kindness of Strangers”, during which we mourn the sad, lonely death of poor Mary Bellows, found “cuffed to the bed, with a rag in her mouth and a bullet in her head”, and the bluesy “Crow Jane”, who avenges her own assault by executing all 20 male attackers. Perhaps the album’s most disturbing figure is Lottie, the yellow-haired, green-eyed 14-year-old who wreaks havoc in “The Curse of Millhaven”. Her “they all gotta die” mantra is repeated with gleeful calm in between stabbings, beheadings, bashings, arson and drownings. When arrested and asked if she feels remorse, she simply replies, “Why of course, there is so much more I could have done if they’d let me!” It’s a fascinating comparison to the 14-minute centrepiece “O’Malley’s Bar”, in which the murderer, after claiming he lacks free will, begins to feel remorse himself. He too is caught and arrested—the only other character to face consequences. Aside from the philosophical implications that inform much of this album’s mythology, these two songs also best show off Cave’s ongoing musical experiments—and the influence of then-new Bad Seeds member Warren Ellis. The multi-instrumentalist and composer quickly became Cave’s closest collaborator, and his violins and organs here hint at just how crucial he’ll become to Cave’s sound over the years and albums to come. So, what’s it all about? Through these broken people, and all their butchery and pain, what, if anything, are we to learn? Is Cave teaching us about the nature of life, death and love, of grief and mourning, of free will and morality? Or is it all just a twisted glorification of Tarantino-level bloodshed? The only song in which nobody dies is the final track, a warm rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Death Is Not the End”. As though in the closing performance of a musical, the album’s cast—Harvey, Minogue, Cave, Shane MacGowan, The Bad Seeds’ Blixa Bargeld and several more—all chip in to assure us that no matter what happens, death is not the end. It’s an oddly sweet conclusion—and one that only leads to more questions.
