Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Ghosteen (2019) / ‘The Emperor is Naked’ Edition
Nick Cave‘s newest album and latest career is a prime example of how much the wish to be effortlessly edgy, hip, and ‘dark’ with a hint of depth, blurs the senses and judgement of listeners.
We start with the cover. It reminds me of an experience that I had earlier in 2019: while walking through Ikea’s basement floor, suddenly I walked into fields of plastic flowers of all kinds, and people were buying them like crazy along with their scented candles. I wondered- when did that happen, that plastic flowers suddenly got fashionable? In my childhood and adolescence world they were all around me- primarily set there by the Turkish, Italian and Greek guestworker’s housewife, who was then horribly mocked for her kitschy and tacky taste. But in post-modern 2019 it is le dernier cri, and forgotten are the displays of sophisticated taste and elitist insults of the past. Also important: never credit or elevate the pioneers of a certain trend- sorry for all the mocking guys, but Graceland is hip now, and it’s ours!
Something similar yet worse is happening with the cover art of Nick Cave’s newest album. The ‘Prince of Darkness‘ treats us with an incredibly kitschy and tamed version of nature, with a unicorn-like white horse in the center of the colorfully air-brushed kitsch-flora; tigers, lions, swans and peacocks mythically grazing over paradisiacal green meadows, and celestial rays of light illuminating the scenery. It is too horrible to be true. Not only is it next level post-modernism that comes without any hint about conceptualism, but it is vomited in your way for you to just swallow it.
And not just that. The tragedy surrounding Nick Cave’s work since his 15-year-old son tragically died in 2015, seems to elevate every image, note, and lyric in his records and give it a deeper meaning. It is like with actors who play a person with disabilities: the critics are entranced by the “ruthless, honest, intensive and intimidating examination of the brutal reality etc.”, and the actors win an Oscar just for that very reason and no matter if that film is actually good. Ghosteen‘s cover art is a perfect example for it- the same people who would have a good laugh at this image if Taylor Swift used it as album cover, now embrace this fabulous unicorn-dream and force themselves to find the beauty in it. Or worse, they opt to completely ignore it and don’t even talk about it. It’s simply not happening. The emperor is naked, indeed.
And since Nick Cave throws his tragedy so prominently into the arena, and his last two albums came with the ever present explanations that it were albums about his son’s death and the grief taking over, some questions should be allowed. Does Cave by now has achieved such a standing, that the critics and fans reflexively find everything by him to be great, no matter what he does or how he does it? Would we be so forgiving with every artist doing that, or would we start talking about the exploitation of a tragic incident if it were another artist or celebrity, let’s say Beyonce? Wouldn’t we tell this person to take a long holiday? Even Eric Clapton only penned one song/album about his little son’s tragic death, while Nick Cave even filmed a documentary about it. It’s painful and you keep asking yourself “Why??”.
It is like watching emotional porn and being put into the role of a horrible voyeur, although you never asked for being in that place. But by now, Nick Cave has become a major interactor, or even spokesperson, for an esoteric and self-obsessed social media crowd who talks about their emotions and anxieties non-stop. It is a self-help group and not a scene from which great art or introspection emerges. Not that I wanna compare these two, but imagine Bowie had talked two years long about his cancer illness on social media and doing documentaries about it before releasing Blackstar. Maybe now you know what I mean.
Also, why is Arthur Cave’s death being talked about so onimously, both in interviews and in his records? We have the impression that he tragically died by falling of a cliff, but it is comletely blended out that he fell of this cliff while being on LSD. Does it take away the sentimental magic or magical sentimentality to address this cold fact? Cave as a recovered drug addict could make a real strong point here addressing the drug issue. But maybe that will happen on his next Bad Seeds album, we’ll see.
Nick Cave fans REALLY want to love Ghosteen, and provide you a truly great show when talking about this album. First of all, one has to make clear that this album doesn’t seem to take place in real life, but only in the world of critics and the virtual reality of social media. 99% of the opinions in this closed circuit move the words back and forth like chewing gum, with the inevitable conclusion eventually spat out: “It took me a few listens … but now I really love it… It’s not an album that you can always listen to… it’s a grower”- words that translate into “It’s shite, but I can’t risk admitting it”. What happens instead is a hilarious attempt into self-conditioning in order to like this album, with the connotation that if somebody doesn’t like it, then this person hasn’t tried hard enough or lacks the emotional capacity and sympathy to get into the spheres of ‘higher perception’. What this path looks like, what defines it and what it is all about – everything remains ominous and unclear, which in turn is the idiot’s chance for intellectuality and depth. The emperor is naked.
Isn’t it disgusting? Comparable to basically all public opinion, every clear word is being avoided at all costs – otherwise they could catch you being clueless idiot. Which is probably the reason why you’re listening to Nick Cave in the first place: don’t they all say that he is this great poet, the Prince of Darkness on which even the softest of us can agree on, with this aura of meaning and depth that wraps him up like Count Dracula’s cape? Who cares that he acts like a crazy evangelical TV preacher at his concerts? That he’s being depicted as new Messiah on his tour posters? Or that his saga includes his pale wife, who now has a fashion line called The Vampire’s Wife. Really? It’s like we’re stuck in highschool and elaborately staged but shallow goth-eroticism perpetually, dark nail polish included. It’s all too placative to be true.
I was always of the opinion that the people around him were very crucial for the aura and output of Nick Cave – the Bad Seeds, Mick Harvey, Spencer P. Jones and other unsung genius artists of the Australian scene, and especially Blixa Bargeld, whose truly intriguing personality and aura seems to have been projected to Cave. And apparently Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds never recovered from the loss of these fantastic and unique musicians, but are on a never ending downward spiral. The music on Ghosteen is characterized by a lack of imagination in melodies and a one-dimensional ambient sound. The sound scapes that Warren Ellis spreads out with his synths and electric violins sound like a 15-year old boy trying out his new keyboard that he got for Christmas, and quickly wear out. No highlights, no tension. The backing vocals “Aaaaaaaaaaah” are often terrible and insulting, and Cave’s singing is a monotonous recitative with a tendency towards howling. He overuses his newly discovered falsetto in a very unnuanced way. It remains a mystery to me why the album gets full points and recommendations in almost all record reviews. It is embarrassing. Or is it the voyeur’s reward for emotional exposure and therefore rather vile?
Maybe it would have been better to have released this album as a book. Although… let’s have a look at some of the lyrics and revisit Nick Cave’s reputation as ‘great poet’ by measuring him by his late output. Even (or especially) considering his personal tragedy, the lyrics are not very impressive, but leave you strangely cold. I would have thought that Nick Cave could use a more personal and creative visual language for his grievance. Instead, a sultry pathos drips from Cave’s lyrics when he is playing around with religious and theatrical clichés, which are all too reminiscent of evangelical revival movements. It’s absolute kitsch, trite and pathetic:
The king had a queen, the queen’s hair was a stairway
She tended the castle garden and in the garden planted a tree
The garden tree was a stairway, it was 16 branches high
On the top branch was a nest, sing the high cloudy nest
In the nest there was a bird, the bird had a wing
The wing had a feather, spin the feather and sing the wind
HOW IN HELL did this amazing poetry straight from the non-farting heart of a virginal and aristocratic Goldilocks got penned? Imagine Jack Torrance sitting in front of his typewriter, but starring at his expensive and romantic Victorian wallpapers instead of the Overlook Hotel’s walls.
The
bright horses have broken free from the fields
They
are horses of love, their manes full of fire
Back to elementary school, it’s pony time again. Not in a Lermontovian or Bukowskian way, but as reflection of the dreamy white air-brush horses running over the cover like stickers that have lost their glitter. I hope your vampire wife is riding these horses naked, Nick.
The three bears watch the TV
They age a lifetime, O’ Lord
Mama bear holds the remote
Papa bear, he just floats
And baby bear, he has gone
To the moon in a boat, on a boat
I’m speaking about love now
And how the lights of love go down
Where is Nick Cave going?!?
By Saliha Enzenauer – February 2020
Oh thank God someone said it in a formal document. I thought I was going crazy.
Ha, this was a great article! Have a good holiday, come back with new stuff soon!!
Perfectly nailed! His shows are so embarrassing. I’ll say something, it’s lovely that Covid took away his stage.
Eines seiner schwächsten Alben… Punkt!!! Vielleicht geht noch was… vielleicht aber auch nicht mehr, ich hoffe auf ersteres…bei mir hat er auf jeden Fall noch Kredit.
Ich ertrage ihn nicht mehr, und seine Musik und Selbsttherapie auch nicht mehr… Klar gibt es Schlimmere, aber für mich ist da kein Unterschied mehr zum evangelischen TV Priester. Abartig!
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You’re awesome!
Saliha,
I agree completely with your assessment of Nick Cave. His fans are obsessed with him, but his music does not deserve this attention and worship, it functions more like a bad cult.
I feel the same way about Father John Misty. He has created what he thinks is this outrageous and provocative persona but it feels like a sham. I actually would add Pure Comedy (and I Love You, Honeybear) to the Hall of Shame (alongside Ghosteen) because Josh Tillman’s pretentiousness is so over-the-top that it’s ridiculous. (Several musicians I’ve met throughout the years that knew him have complained about how egotistical he is.)
Bad cult is a perfect description!!
He can do what he wants to and you can fuck off.
Wop-bop-a-loom-a-blop-bam-BOOM! Article like this is the reason why I like Vinyl Writers so much. Nick Cave’s concert was one of the best I’ve ever been. And the Sick Bag Song used to be my bedtime book. Now this. Previous album was so heavy, which is why I have avoided ”Ghosteen” … yet. Now I definitely need to listen it – shall I need the sick bag.
By the way, after many months I’m able to listen Abba’s murder ballads again.
Thank you Saliha, everything’s good here. ”Pompous and nothingness” well described. And thanks for Gencebay recommendation, I’ve listened his early ’70’s albums. Really fascinating. Brilliant bağlama playing. Can’t understand lyrics, but feeling comes through. I hope you are good there.
He’s slowly become a caricature of himself unfortunately.
You are a true wordsmith, aren’t you? But in the end his son died and who cares if Nick needs to record 10 albums to deal with his loss? And if social media helps him, why not? Same goes to his concerts as collective healing experience. It’s cruel what you suggest here.
I strongly agree with you, Saliha. A great article!. I really liked that you pointed out how Nick seems to be talking to that part of the “new generation” that is obsessed with social media and with making posts about their supposed “depression and anxiety”. These mental illnesses are very serious, and I see that most people are talking about them on a highly superficial level, just to grab the attention of others, or to look edgy and intellectual. They even make a self-diagnosis without having absolutely no idea of what they’re talking about, that’s painfully awful.
Just see the rise of artists like Billie Eilish or Lana del Rey, their audience is full of these kind of people. And critics are also glorifying their records…
I also liked that you emphasized the point of his son’s death, Nick seems to have clinged on that branch, and yes, it is a tragedy. But it seems to me that the chewing gum has already lengthened too much. Also, the drug issue has to be taken into account. As you said, other artists live or have lived much worse things, and they aren’t using them as a public shield.
I think that this album is pretentious, critics are calling this a “brilliant shift” to ambient sound. Brian Eno would be laughing about the simplicity and one-dimensional ambient path of this album. Also, what the hell is going on with these lyrics, I understand that Nick intended to make a conceptual album, but he did it in the worst possible way. The backing vocals “Aaaaaaah” 😂.
“The Boatman’s Call” days are completely gone.
Oh Octavio, don’t get me started. It used to be ‘My family, my house, my car, my boat…’ Now we’ve added to that ‘my virtues, my anxiety, my illness, my menstruation.’ It has become another fashionable Western style of life. Cave gets rewarded with a very false emotional sympathy which is not about the actual event or music anymore, but a collective bath in all kinds of esoterics and self-assurance. The reward of the voyeur, a poisonous gift. This scene is unsettling and disintegrating for me.
He’s become like a terrible Elvis, and I say that as a fan. It’s clearly not about the music anymore, so I think that is not relevant in the critics and fans judgement of his albums anymore. Hope for something better with the next Grinderman album.
‘A terrible Elvis’ is not so far off. Emphasis on terrible, cause Elvis at least never thought of him as messiah or prophet . He was a ‘Mensch’.
Grinderman was the beginning of the end, as it brought Warren Ellis in Focus.
You tell the truth! This is practically the first review I have read that doesn’t praise this incredibly mediocre album. It’s as if a long lost Beatles record came out and everybody is praising it although you only hear Ringo fart on the tapes. Nick Cave’s concerts are insane, but not in a good way, I can’t believe what is going on there. Like a scary cult! Thank you for addressing these uncomfortable topics, especially the Bowie comparison is brilliant! Fan!
Thank you, I’ve had a good laugh at the Beatles / Ringo analogy. I think the concerts are plain scary, a creepy pseudo-religious mass hypnose. And it’s all prepared and staged, starting with the tour posters, the aesthetics with him acting like a messiah, the snippets his PR team lets out – in the world of advertisement you call that ‘corporate branding’
Haven’t listened to the album but I gotta say that you are a brilliant observator, very sharp. So much truth in here, and not only related to Nick Cave. As for him, every album past Dig Lazarus Dig!! has gotten further
and further away from narrative song writing. Mick Harvey said he left band because he didn’t like the direction things were going creatively. He made the right choice, Mick Harvey was always there to rain Nick in when he went too far out. That doesn’t happen anymore. Mick Harvey was a huge part of this band as you rightly stated.
I don’t agree. For me this was the best of last year, an epic masterpiece of peace and mourning. It sounds both religious and mystic. Some of what you write here sounds cynical, while other aspects stick painfully. Cave has done some things which are really questionable, I hope he finds his way out of this.
Thank you for taking “the bat” down a few pegs in the goth empire of the doomed. Your analysis of “talent” is spot. And if anyone need further proof, and they shouldn’t, simply reread his trite and meaningless lyrics from your critique of his songs. I’m afraid some music fans have bought into his mediocre work so deeply that they have completely lost their ability to see the truth. As you suggest, Cave is desperately in need of another songwriting partner who can try to prop-up his elementary school poetry. So good to see a brave look at the emperor and point of his exploitation of personal tragedy. Thank you for an intelligent look at the emperor and his lack of clothing.
The bat 🦇 didn’t Peter Hook call him like that in his book?
Brutal.
I like the album, but agree with you on many things here, especially the creepy concerts and their promotion. Really sad what Nick Cave has fallen to by becoming so full of himself.
Exactly my thoughts, although I wouldn’t rate the album so low. Given the circumstances around this album, you’re sympathizing with Nick Cave before you’ve even heard the first tune. The critics have collectively praised this album. And it is indeed at times beautiful, deep, emotional, thoughtful, harmonic but most of all: boring. I tried my best to ignore that fact as far as I could, but in the end of the day you have to be honest. It’s very good, but also very boring.
I get that this is supposed to be an important emotional piece after the death of his son. You have some valid and important things to say about this here.
But I can not understand how this is an enjoyable listen. This having critical acclaim blows my mind — it’s boring and way too niche a substance