Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds Recent News

NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS WIN "ALBUM OF THE YEAR" AT THE PRESTIGIOUS MOJO AWARDS

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:06:00 -0700

Limited Edition Book on the Song "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!" In Stores July 8

North American Tour – the First in Five Years – Kicks off Sept 16 in San Diego CA

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds were awarded the Best Album award at the 2008 MOJO Honors ceremony this week in London. MOJO readers voted for the band's 2008 release DIG, LAZARUS, DIG!!! as best album from a shortlist of strong contenders including the Arctic Monkeys, Duffy, Radiohead, and Alison Krauss & Robert Plant.

Additionally, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are set to release their DIG, LAZARUS, DIG!!! book on July 8th. The 46-page hard back four inch square book contains exclusive handwritten lyrics and notes by Nick Cave, photos and illustrations, a three inch CD of the single 'Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!', plus an interview with Nick Cave and British artists Tim Noble And Sue Webster who created the cover art for the album, DIG, LAZARUS, DIG!!!.

Nick Cave writes:

"The little book is about the making of the song 'Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!' It is a curiosity that deals with the preparation and final glorious outcome of a project that began on the back of an envelope, a literal 'scrap' of an idea and ended up evolving into a genuine cultural icon and classic rock 'n' roll song, due to the collaborative efforts of myself, The Bad Seeds and Brit artists Sue Webster and Tim Noble. The song, which is a comic re-imagining of the Lazarus myth (placing the recently 'risen' Lazarus in 70's New York City) is accompanied by an eight foot square light sculpture, employing over 750 light bulbs, built by Webster and Noble. This little book documents the journey of this mammoth collaboration. Dig it!!!"

The book will be available from Amazon.com, Borders and independent music retailers and bookstores nationwide.

In other Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds news, the band will follow their summer European festival dates with their first North American tour in five years. A stop at the historic Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, with opening acts Cat Power and Spiritualized, will kick off the long-awaited tour in grand style.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds North American tour dates:

09-16 San Diego, CA - 4th & B
09-17 Los Angeles, CA - Hollywood Bowl
09-20 San Francisco, CA - Warfield Theatre
09-22 Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom
09-23 Seattle, WA - Showbox SoDo
09-26 Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre
09-29 Chicago, IL - Riviera Theatre
10-01 Toronto, Ontario - Kool Haus
10-02 Montreal, Quebec - Metropolis
10-04 New York, NY - WaMu Theater at MSG
10-05 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club

Nick Cave, Digging Himself a Singular Niche

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:04:00 -0700

Click here to listen to Nick Cave on NPR now!

Fresh Air from WHYY, April 28, 2008 - Love, violence, death and America have always been themes for Australian-born singer-composer Nick Cave - Murder Ballads and Abbatoir Blues are just two of his album titles - so he was perhaps a natural to compose the soundtrack for last year's epically paranoid Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Cave also wrote the screenplay and soundtrack for the Australian epic The Proposition, which Roger Ebert described as "pitiless and uncompromising, so filled with pathos and disregarded innocence that it is a record of those things we pray to be delivered from."

Cave appeared in Wim Wenders' 1987 film Wings of Desire, and he's written both plays and novels.

Now Cave has released a new CD with his band the Bad Seeds. The title? Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! The inspiration, he says, is the Biblical story of Lazarus' return from the grave. -NPR.ORG

GRINDERMAN: Summer Festivals

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:04:00 -0700

Following their universally acclaimed debut album, Grinderman are kicking off the summer with a long-awaited string of UK and European festival dates.

Grinderman live performances have thus far been a rare sight in Europe, with only three previous dates in the UK (appearing twice during The Dirty Three's ATP festival and a one-off show with Suicide and Seasick Steve at The Forum in London). Grinderman performed a handful of US dates (including a support slot for The White Stripes at Madison Square Garden) before ending 2007 supporting Nick Cave's solo tour of Australia.
Grinderman's first album incited and excited critics and fans alike. They will soon be returning to the studio to write their second album.

4th July - Roskilde, Denmark
5th July - Eurockeennes, France
6th July - Rock Werchter, Belgium
18th July - Summercase, Barcelona Spain
19th July - Summercase, Madrid Spain
20th July - Latitude, UK
6th August - Oya Festival, Norway
8th August - Way Out West, Sweden
30th August - Connect Festival, Scotland
31st August - Electric Picnic, Ireland

Nick Cave: Listen to the title track, "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!"

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:01:00 -0800

Go to: http://www.nickcaveandthebadseeds.com and listen to the title track off Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds upcoming release, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, out April 8th, 2008.

Produced by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Nick Launay who worked with the band oh their last album Abattoir Blues/ Lyre Of Orpheus, the new album was recorded over the summer at State of the Ark Studios in richmond and mixed by Nick Launay at British Grove in Chiswick.

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' score The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:10:00 -0700

MUSIC FROM THE MOTION PICTURE
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
BY NICK CAVE AND WARREN ELLIS
RELEASED BY MUTE ON 5th NOVEMBER 2007
DIGITAL DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE ON 22nd OCT

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, of the internationally celebrated bands Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, The Dirty Three and Grinderman, have composed, played and produced a compelling and intense soundtrack for director Andrew Dominik's savage tale of the true West, The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Mute releases the original soundtrack on 5th November 2007. The download will be available on 22nd October.

Dominik, who previously directed the 2000 cult classic Chopper, the biography of the notorious Australian criminal Mark 'Chopper' Read, has brought his distinctive vision to bear upon the story of the slaying of one of the most infamous outlaws of the American West, Jesse Woodson James (1847-1882). The film, based upon Ron Hansen's novel and adapted for the screen by Dominik, charts how Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) joined Jesse James' (Brad Pitt) cutthroat gang of bandits, train-robbers and bank-robbers, only to become resentful of James' nationwide notoriety, he then formed a plan to kill the deadly gunslinger. The film also stars Sam Shepard, Robert Duvall, Sam Rockwell and Mary-Louise Parker.

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have previously collaborated on a film score, for John Hillcoat's critically acclaimed 2005 Australian 'Western', The Proposition, starring Ray Winstone, Guy Pearce and Danny Huston. Cave (who provided the script for The Proposition) and Ellis' haunting semi-acoustic score, featuring plaintive violin, eerie sound loops and mournful piano, received universal praise.

Cave, of course, is no stranger to film scoring and has established a renowned reputation for his work in this field. Together with fellow Bad Seeds Mick Harvey and Blixa Bargeld, Cave wrote the indelible soundtracks for two other motion pictures directed by John Hillcoat: the harrowing 1989 prison drama Ghosts... Of The Civil Dead and the 1996 emotionally charged jungle melodrama, To Have And To Hold. Nick Cave has also been commissioned by various directors to compose specific songs for their motion pictures; including Wim Wenders, for his pictures Until The End Of The World (1991) and Faraway, So Close! (the 1993 sequel his Wings Of Desire, in which Cave And The Bad Seeds performed), and Jez Butterworth for Mojo (1997).

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' thrilling new score for The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford captures perfectly the charismatic and unpredictable nature of its central protagonist. Like the film, Cave and Ellis' music cuts through the mythic figure of Jesse James to reveal the complex, contradictory man beneath. Daring and passionately delivered, Cave and Ellis' beautiful soundtrack retains its captivating power even without the benefit of Dominik's images.

Nick Cave takes #1 in the Mojo 40 Best Albums of '04!

Wed, 26 Jan 2005 00:01:00 -0800

40 Best Albums of �04

#1 - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Abbatoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus

MOJO writers� records(s) of the year celebrated by Sylvie Simmons

�THE WORK,� Cave told MOJO, �of a genius.� Though his tongue was presumably no too many miles from his cheek, he was spot on. This was his big one. A personal milestone in a more than quarter-century recording history. And the return of the Great Double Album- a long-lost creature last seen around the time Cave swapped Birthday Party for Bad Seeds 13 albums ago.

With CDs offering a berth for 70 minutes of music, it�s rare these days for an act to stick its neck out and offer a double- unless they�re out of their heads (OutKast), bent on commercial suicide (Wilco), incapable of editing themselves, or all of the above. But Cave decided he needed two discs for his sweeping 80-minute treatise on Love, Lust, History, Humanity, Myth, Apocalypse, Panties, God, Rock n� Roll- the capital letter stuff that�s been his lifelong obsession- and he was right. A mating pair, spiritual and secular, squally and sweet. Dealing lightly with weighty themes, weightily with light ones.

With the help of the Bad Seeds (bar Blixa Bargeld), Birthday Party producer Nick Launay, a London gospel choir and a Paris studio, Cave dug first into rock�s blues-gospel roots then deeper, past Australia, right down into the Underworld in pursuit of the urrockstar of Greek myth, Orpheus, whose lyre-playing charmed the trees, rocks and even the dead. The result, among many excellent things, was a title track as picaresque and side-splitting as his greatest OTT narratives: O�Malley�s Bar from his Murder Ballads record or John Finn�s Wife from Henry�s Dream.

The focus and authority needed to pull off a work this audacious is something you get form the great artists, particularly as they age. Although three years off 50, Cave seemed somehow too boyish to join that canon, preferring the role of admirer and emulator- Leonard Cohen and Neil Young tributes; singing harmonies with Johnny Cash; writing songs for Marianne Faithfull.
But on Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, Cave a Prospero on his own Stygian island, has been guaranteed a spot up there with the big boys.

SPEECH!
Nick Cave says, Thank You!

�WOW, I�VE arrived! That�s great, right? I haven�t heard the other albums, but I suspect ours deserves to be Number 1. I�ve always liked MOJO �it�s a music magazine- so there�s some kind of meaning in that. I don�t mind awards, it�s the ceremonies- having to sit there. There�s nothing more agonizing for me than having to do that. Not that I�ve done it. At the thought of having to do something like that, it�s just much easier to say no.

�With this album, we knew early on that we had really good songs. We�d had this songwriting thing where me and Warren [Ellis, viola[ and Marty[Casey, bassist] and Jim[Sklavunos, drums] had all gotten together to write in Paris, which was helpful. And there were a whole lot of different things happening within the group that made the recording process somehow very cathartic, and a real pleasure at the same time.

�Blixa[Bargeld, guitarist] was no longer in the group. As much as it was very sad for him to go, it was also an enormously freeing thing. James [Johnston, keyboards] had come in really fresh, and dying for the job. It changed the whole chemistry of the band, and allowed us to play a certain type of music that we would�ve had problems playing in the past, which was some basic rock �n� roll music. It just opened things up, allowed us to let go.� -As told by Andrew Perry

Tom Waits, Elliott Smith and Nick Cave all make the Pop Matters best of 2004 list.

Mon, 20 Dec 2004 00:12:00 -0800

1. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (Anti-)
Nick Cave's magnum opus, a thrilling pasticcio of magnanimous rock, pastoral folk, and wicked church music, covers more ground in two discs than most artists can in an entire career. God, cannibals, deception, nature, divine inspiration, slaughterhouses, Johnny Cash, mythology, comfort, love, greed, sorcery, and little redemptions in the face of massive tragedies represent just the half of it. Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus is a sprawling "Song of Myself" manifesto, bubbling with piety, fear, and hope. The Bad Seeds sound like they're capable of anything; they use Cave's poetics as kindling to set fire to any stereo willing to risk its mechanical life. This year's gospel.

4. Elliott Smith, From a Basement on the Hill (Anti-)
From a Basement on the Hill presents a rawer Elliott Smith than we had recently become accustomed to; its songs are rough around the edges and frequently devoid of Smith's impeccable bridges. Still, the final record of Smith's career is loaded with peerless melodies that guide the lyrics to an emotional resonance lacking pretension. From naked acoustic tracks "A Fond Farewell" and "Memory Lane" to the kitchen-sink absolution of "King's Crossing" and "Coast to Coast", From a Basement on the Hill plays like a best-of collection filled with previously unknown songs.

12. Tom Waits, Real Gone (Anti-)
When it comes to Tom Waits, weirder is better. Real Gone reclaims the farmland funkmeister thread of Bone Machine, a sloppy stew of cacophonous percussion and Mark Ribot's Ginzu knife guitar. "Hoist That Rag" and "Make It Rain" groove with weathered authority and knowing futility -- eyes rolling into the back of the head, James Brown singing Kurt Weill, real gone funk stuff. Waits is the undisputed heavyweight of surrealist blues.

popmatters.com

Nick Cave, Elliott Smith and Tom Waits named among the Best Music of 2004.

Mon, 06 Dec 2004 00:12:00 -0800

From Popmatters.com:

1. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Abattoir Blues/The
Lyre of Orpheus (Anti-)

Nick Cave's magnum opus, a thrilling pasticcio of
magnanimous rock, pastoral folk, and wicked
church music, covers more ground in two discs
than most artists can in an entire career. God,
cannibals, deception, nature, divine inspiration, slaughterhouses, Johnny Cash, mythology, comfort, love, greed, sorcery, and little redemptions in the face of massive tragedies represent just the half of it. Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus is a sprawling "Song of Myself" manifesto, bubbling with piety, fear, and hope. The Bad Seeds sound like they're capable of anything; they use Cave's poetics as kindling to set fire to any stereo willing to risk its mechanical life. This year's gospel.

4. Elliott Smith, From a Basement on the Hill
(Anti-)

From a Basement on the Hill presents a rawer
Elliott Smith than we had recently become
accustomed to; its songs are rough around the
edges and frequently devoid of Smith's impeccable
bridges. Still, the final record of Smith's
career is loaded with peerless melodies that
guide the lyrics to an emotional resonance
lacking pretension. From naked acoustic tracks "A
Fond Farewell" and "Memory Lane" to the
kitchen-sink absolution of "King's Crossing" and
"Coast to Coast", From a Basement on the Hill
plays like a best-of collection filled with
previously unknown songs.

12. Tom Waits, Real Gone (Anti-)

When it comes to Tom Waits, weirder is better.
Real Gone reclaims the farmland funkmeister
thread of Bone Machine, a sloppy stew of
cacophonous percussion and Mark Ribot's Ginzu
knife guitar. "Hoist That Rag" and "Make It Rain"
groove with weathered authority and knowing
futility -- eyes rolling into the back of the
head, James Brown singing Kurt Weill, real gone
funk stuff. Waits is the undisputed heavyweight
of surrealist blues.

popmatters.com

Anti-/Epitaph artists recieve 11 PLUG Independent Music Award nominations!

Wed, 01 Dec 2004 00:12:00 -0800

The PLUG Independent Music Awards began in 2001 and are dedicated to celebrating the artists that flourish independent of Major label support. PLUG is about the independent community � fans and biz � coming together to recognize its own.

Epitaph and Anti- have recieved 11 nominations for this year's awards including artist of the year and record label of the year. This year�s event will be held in New York City this February.

Here are the catagories and nominees:

Female Artist Of The Year:
A Girl Called Eddy
Jolie Holland

Male Artist Of The Year:
Tom Waits
Nick Cave

Artist Of The Year:
Tom Waits

Punk Rock Album Of The Year:
Bad Religion - The Empire Strikes First
Converge - You Fail Me

Live Act Of The Year:
Sage Francis

Label Act Of The Yea:r
Anti-

PLUG Album Art/Packaging Of The Year:
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus
Tom Waits - Real Gone

You can cast your vote for the PLUG awards online HERE!

Read this great Nick Cave article from CNN.com.

Wed, 17 Nov 2004 00:11:00 -0800

Nick Cave gives Europe the 'Abattoir Blues'

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Australian doom merchant Nick Cave and his band the Bad Seeds head to Europe this week after a triumphal UK tour promoting their latest album, which is reported to be selling faster than any before it in their 20-year career.

They play a short series of gigs in major European cities to showcase "Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus," and on the basis of Friday's concert in London these dates are worth catching if you want to see a unique performer at the peak of his powers.

Blending Cave's visceral vocals, a four-voice gospel choir and the Seeds led by long-standing sidekick, guitarist Mick Harvey, the band give a spellbinding performance let down only by the disappointing acoustics of the high-ceilinged Brixton Academy.

Prowling the stage like a "demented whisky-priest," as one reviewer described him, Cave seemed out to prove that domestic tranquility in the southern English resort of Brighton had not detracted from his work.

The first half of the show, comprising material from this year's excellent double album, was warmly received with the singles "Nature Boy" and "There She Goes, My Beautiful World" set to become future Cave classics.
The energy levels throughout the 2 1/4-hour concert were phenomenal: leading the band in an unlikely clapalong during "Supernaturally" while dancing in his extraordinary way, the former Birthday Party frontman puts the many forty-somethings in the audience to shame. And it's a wonder how his cigarette-hardened voice lasts the course.

After a brief interval, the band really come alive with older songs such as "Stagger Lee," "Deanna," "The Red Right Hand" and closing with "The Mercy Seat."

The latter song, from 1988's "Tender Prey" album, is greeted with rapturous applause that lies incongruously with the subject matter of murder, death row and damnation; Cave always did do downbeat ones in the most upbeat way though.

A fabulous performance then, and judging by postings following the Paris concert on Monday, one that is being repeated across the continent. If you can get hold of a ticket, don't miss out.

By CNN's Peter Wilkinson
cnn.com