release date: Mar. 4, 1997
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,72]
producer: Flood, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
label: Mute Records - nationality: Australia
Track highlights: 1. "Into My Arms" (4 / 5) - 3. "People Ain't No Good" - 4. "Brompton Oratory" (4 / 5) - 5. "There Is a Kingdom" - 6. "(Are You) The One I've Been Waiting For?" (4 / 5) - 7. "Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere?" - 8. "West Country Girl" - 9. "Black Hair" - 12. "Green Eyes"
10th studio album by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds follows only one year after Murder Ballads is a 12 track album. This is the first in a long series of albums where new band member, Warren Ellis on violin, accordion and piano contributes to a new stylistic approach. The album is an even more quiet one from The Bad Seeds, as it's entirely piano-based ballads and basically sounds much like a solo singer / songwriter release by Nick Cave.
My initial verdict made me reject it for the first decade, but I have come to see it as a major work by Cave, and despite the fact that I don't find that obvious many great tracks on the album, I still rate it higher than Murder Ballads, because of a generally higher level and the album comes out as a quite coherent collection of songs.
The album was generally met by critical acclaim and many critics labelled the album one of Cave's most successful releases - it is also included in "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". The strong emotional stories seem made in the aftermath, a troublesome time for Cave as PJ Harvey had let him go prior to the recordings of some of the songs. The songs "West Country Girl", "Black Hair" and "Green Eyes" are said to have lyrics about PJ Harvey [see: Cave interview in The Guardian, and wikipedia ].
[ allmusic.com 4,5 / 5, Rolling Stone 4 / 5, Uncut, Record Collector 5 / 5 stars ]
