If you weren't big fans of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, now is your chance:
Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! is a masterpiece of crazy, wild poetry and eclectic sonic artistry.
The sound is a bit different from previous Bad Seeds records, more garage rock, with a consistent smattering of acoustic and electrical noise -- all backscored to Nick Cave preacher sermoning, except that he is not in a church or at a pulpit, but more likely in some idyllic depression-era dustbowl, roaming the streets singing to anyone who'll listen. The sensibility is old Americana but the feel is contemporary. I'll just let him explain:
Ever since I can remember hearing the Lazarus story, when I was a kid, you know, back in church, I was disturbed and worried by it. Traumatized, actually. We are all, of course, in awe of the greatest of Christ's miracles - raising a man from the dead - but I couldn't help but wonder how Lazarus felt about it. As a child it gave me the creeps, to be honest. I've taken Lazarus and stuck him in New York City, in order to give the song, a hip, contemporary feel. I was also thinking about Harry Houdini who spent a lot of his life trying to debunk the spiritualists who were cashing in on the bereaved. He believed there was nothing going on beyond the grave. He was the second greatest escapologist, Harry was, Lazarus, of course, being the greatest. I wanted to create a kind of vehicle, a medium, for Houdini to speak to us if he so desires, you know, from beyond the grave.
Usually the first thing that grabs us about contemporary songs is the music, how it sounds; it happens to be a derivative of pop. In this case, what I was first struck by were the ingeniously savage and ironic lyrics. On my favorite track "We Call Upon The Author" Nick Cave mauls everyone from Jesus to Bukowski to Governments:
...Rosary clutched in his hand, he died with tubes up his nose
And a cabal of angels with finger cymbals chanted his name in code
We shook our fists at the punishing rain
And we call upon the author to explain
(Doop doop doop doop dooop)
Who is this great burdensome slavering dog-thing that mediocres my every thought?
I feel like a vacuum cleaner, a complete sucker, it's fucked up and he is a fucker
But what an enormous and encyclopaedic brain
I call upon the author to explain
(Doop doop doop doop dooop ...)
Oh rampant discrimination, mass poverty, third world debt, infectious diseease
Global inequality and deepening socio-economic divisions
Well, it does in your brain
And we call upon the author to explain...
I've been listening to
Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! for a week now, virtually on loop, and it continues to surprise me with every listen. Every track is gold. I don't know what other album in 2008 can top this. A fucking treasure!
Favorite tracks: "We Call Upon The Author," "Dig, Lazarus, Dig," "Moonland," "Albert Goes West," Night Of The Locust Eaters," "More News From Nowhere"
