Album Review: Abattoir Blues

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues (2004)

A couple of disclaimers: I am no Nick Cave aficionado; I've just seen him pop up on numerous best-of lists and so I decided to give some of his more lauded work a try. He has throaty baritone voice and a lyric-centric emphatic following, two factors that can sometimes serve to scare me off: they can be an indication that an artist's' grandness lies in his ability to overcome vocal lackings via the merit of his poetry, and my response to that - my Dylan leanings aside* - is generally that if I wanted poetry, I'd read poetry. So I was frightened going in, but on this album, his vocals are employed in a sort of preacher-fire mode that is nicely balanced by backup vocals and a roaring rock band. It works really well. Disclaimer two: Abattoir Blues is actually the first half of a double album (the other disc is called The Lyre of Orpheus), and maybe if I were more of a Cave disciple I would insist on reviewing the albums as a set. But there's a dramatic split between the two (to my ears), the albums employed, among other dissimilarities, separate drummers, and they have two different titles. It's more of a Use Your Illusion I & II kind of double album, or maybe a Speakerboxxx/The Love Below split, than, say, a Melon Collie & the Infinite Sadness double disc affair. So I'm going to take them on separately.

* - This is a long-standing attitude of mine, that lyrical content is decidedly secondary to the "music," and I guess I sort of fall into a Michael Stipe camp where the vocals are more of an additional instrument than a deliverer of wisdom. If anything, a bad or trite or otherwise awkward lyric has more potential to wreck an otherwise fine song than it does to enhance it. This, of course, is entirely inconsistent with my love of all things Bob, he of the poetic lyrics and (usually) nasally, grating voice. All I can guess is that Dylan's lyrical attitude is so upfront that it to some degree penetrates everything about the music, so even relatively plain guitar strumming reflects off it, does not just serve as a sort of background bassline for the spoken word. And, of course, a lot of Dylan tunes are highly crafted and backed by fantastic studio musicians. I do suspect, though, that I'm often just really lazy, and since I spend so much of my time analyzing written words that I try to take music as a respite from engaging my linguistic lobes. There's an obvious Phish-connection here, too, as their lyrics are often non-sensical word salad. Anyways, the times in which I do pay close attention do tend to enhance the experience, so per usual, it seems I know nothing. Still, if some singer annoys me and the instrumentation is just background to their profundity, I'm not going to be inspired by "But the lyrics..." type arguments.

Abattoir Blues is, no doubt about it, a ROCK album, and I gather that this is not Cave's typical vein. It's also raunchy blues and, one can't help but notice, a sort of snarling, secular gospel album. The "gospel" is obvious, not in a Elvis Presley gospel album way, but in a "hey, there is a gospel choir belting big, anthemic choruses" way. This could have been U2 kinds of cheesy, but as mentioned, the balance with Cave's lead vocals is fantastic. The vibe of the disc - and much of the lyrical content - gives off the impression a hipster godless sermoner, one seeking God in nature and love but unwilling to drop the sneer for any sanctioned dose of religion. These grandiose songs are balanced by balladeer blues numbers and dirty blues shuffles, making for a thoroughly even album that is liquid-dripping beautiful, even if no songs jump out as "this is the catchy single." There are prominent drums (that's an understatement), ringing pedal-pressed pianos, whirling leads, dirty distorted and super-crisp, clean guitars to accompany the vocals, and I can't emphasize enough that the balance is excellent, giving a top to bottom bounce experience between crowd-riling and spooky contemplation.

Though arguably single-less, this album features a ton of highlights. The opener, "Get Ready For Love," wastes no time in invoking (JSBE?) tent-revival mania, and it's a great example of an album "raining down" on the listener. "Cannibal's Hymn" alternates between backroom blues and a ballad-waltz. Both "Hiding All Away" and "There She Goes, My Beautiful World" spotlight the powerful effects of a preacher/gospel choir verse/chorus dialogue, with uplifting choruses that are so catchy as to possibly be over-infectious. "Messiah Ward" closes what would be Side A with a long, lovely and eerie mid-tempo number, and "Abattoir Blues" slows things down with a sparse, minimalist affair featuring a big bass drum and whole note piano chords.

"Nature Boy" gets its own paragraph, because it's one of these songs that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. It seems entirely ordinary, but there's something about they way it rolls along with driving verses interspersed by laid back, glowing choruses that is just plain inspiring. I don't know enough about song-writing or music theory to understand how something that sounds like such a typical pop song can be so lovely. It's a superb centerpiece, even though on some level I know it's just an execution of something that should sound formulaic. I don't get it, but I love it, and it stands as a symbol of the album: a straight-forward rock piece that is better than the "gospel-rock with standard instrumentation" makes it sound.

The album closes with more earthly fare: "Let the Bells Ring," a non-transcendental (though still plenty pleasant) acoustic driven pop-rocker, and "Fable of the Brown Ape," something - in its spoken word over slow bass alternating with gospel-rock freak outs - that is much more what I expected from what I've heard about Nick Cave. Both are solid, and "Brown Ape" even brings the album to something of an appropriate weird fade out close to the album, but they are definitely a tick below the rest of the disc. Overall, a very impressive album with a great unified theme and sound. (And this review doesn't emphasize them, but keep an ear out for the nice lyrical quips: "woke up this morning / with a frappacino in my hand" should, if nothing else, get some images of the New Jersey Turnpike running through your head). If Nick Cave, with or without the Bad Seeds, has a lot of discs like this in his canon, I am excited to being taking steps towards fandom.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Nature Boy"

ADDENDUM: I made (maybe) the mistake of recommending this album to Aaron, who responded that he "wasn't digging it" or "it wasn't him" or something to that effect after listening to clips on iTunes. So that either speaks to my old man adult-contemporary leanings, Aaron's lack of them, or the fact that because this doesn't have a whole lot of insta-hook to it, you might want to give this one a couple of spins before giving up on it. My favorite, "Nature Boy," in particular, fully implanted itself on about the third run through. (But seriously, if your heart doesn't get pumped at the opening fire and brimstone track, then you should probably get your motherboard replaced and go back to chasing John Connor) (jackass). :)