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Album Review
by SashaS
5-4-2005
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| Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Bs & rarities |
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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: 'B-sides & Rarities'
(Mute)
Cave & Seeds: quality of the flip-sides
Listening to this astounding collection, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ ‘B-sides & Rarities’, I feel sad. Not about the music, not due to Cave - far from it! - losing it, but because such compilations will not be possible in the future. With single format losing ground faster than LA Lakers dropping points to [missing] playoffs, the B-sides have been extinct for a fair while. With the advent of legal Downloads - no B-sides’ collections will be possible to compile in the future.
Spanning the full twenty-one years of Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds illustrious career, this comprehensive three CD set presents a thrilling, eclectic and splendid retrospective; this material by the band comes from variety of sources: some of which has been deleted, featured on a disparate number of soundtrack albums or has never been officially released before. A landmark 56 track compilation.
“Basically, this is material that was B-sides, outtakes or extra recordings,” states Mick Harvey, a founding member of The Bad Seeds, the group’s multi instrumentalist and this project's co-ordinator. "We tried to include everything that came under that criteria. The other criteria was that it was a Bad Seeds recording not a Nick Cave recording. There isn't anything by Nick working with other people or by himself, it's just Nick with members of The Bad Seeds.” [Apart from one track, recorded by Nick Cave and The Dirty Three: ‘Time Jesum Transeuntum Et Non Riverentum’.]
“The only real diversion from the theme is 'God's Hotel' and 'O'Malley's Bar', which are radio sessions, because we liked them and thought that they deserved some further airing. We left off 'B-side' from the 'Loverman' CD single because that's not a song, it's an editing exercise, and 'Where The Action Is' because it was too long and sprawling. We'll try and keep those singles available."
"I originally put the idea of doing this ‘B-Sides & Rarities’ collection in 1996/97, compiling two discs, as it would have been then," recollects Harvey on the project’s gestation. "The general response was, 'Yes, great idea. We just have to look for the right moment to do it.' There hasn't been enough space where there wasn't something else imminent. Its release now is a fairly arbitrary moment in time. Now it has expanded to three discs, which is fine. The running order was generally put together in some chronological order, although it was mixed up a little here and there, if songs didn't go together very well.”
From the very beginning of the band's career in 1984 (in that year 'The Moon Is In The Gutter' appeared on the flipside of Cave/Seeds first 7" inch vinyl release, a cover of Elvis Presley's 'In The Ghetto') through to the 2004 song 'Under This Moon' (a track that was previously only available on the B-Side of 'Breathless'/'There She Goes My Beautiful World' from the recent critically acclaimed album ‘Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus’).
‘B-Sides & Rarities’ offers a riveting account of the band's alternative takes, it maps artistic development and charts calls of varied influences; this impressive collection of extra studio recorded tracks that were not included on completed Nick Cave And The Bad Seed albums, songs that were recorded on commission for motion picture soundtracks or cover versions for tribute albums and two radio sessions, offer you the ‘other’ side of the man and his band.
"This is my favourite Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds album," Mr Cave said.
It ain’t half assed, bro.
9/10
SashaS
5-4-2005
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ album ‘B-sides & Rarities’ is available now on Mute
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