Great Australian Albums / Murder Ballads - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

''This part of the Great Australian Albums series homes in on the 1995 album Murder Ballads. It was an important release for more than one reason. After the last thrash chords of Let Love In died out Cave emerged with piano, strings and a series of songs that never broke walking pace. For a Cave tragic like myself there were two shock/horrors to absorb - no thrash numbers and a duet with Kylie Minogue - say it ain't so!

As it turns out Cave was one step ahead, realising that he was getting older and needed to develop a new maturity in his work or risk becoming a joke.

Murder Ballads may not be the best Bad Seeds record but it did lead to one surreal moment - the band singing with Kylie on Top of the Pops!

As with the other episodes in this series we get a chance to hear from the key creative forces behind the album - Cave, multi-instrumentalist and legend Mick Harvey, bassist Martyn Casey (described by Cave as The Rock of Gibralter), piano player Conway Savage, Miss Minogue herself and a selection of other musos, music commentators and old friends. For Birthday Party fans it is great to hear from guitarist Roland S. Howard who popped in to do some backing vocals and other bits on the album.

Other episodes in this series have shown how hard it can be to make a record. This album, however, was described as a "party album" as Cave and the Band and a host of friends put it together in a seemingly stress free manner. Cave relates how the album began as something of a joke and was recorded in that spirit.

The duet with Kylie was a spur of the moment thing and Minogue relishes the delicious irony in the fact that Cave left a message with her mother and she, ringing back, left a message with Cave's mum - how very rock and roll! Friends rocked up to the recording session, forming the Moron Tabernacle Choir providing raucous backing for some songs.

Murder Ballads draws from many sources including American folk songs but it is hard to make any real connection between the 1927 recording of Stackalee and Cave's wild, vulgar and funny Stagger Lee, a staple of his live sets. In fact, listening again to the album it is hard not to see the funny side of some of the songs, particularly the mad polka of The Curse of Millhaven and the epic O'Malleys Bar. For my money, the best track on the album is the one where the fairer sex gets it's revenge - the duet with P.J. Harvey, Henry Lee, where the girl does the stickin'.''

(Trevor Darge)

http://www.michaeldvd.com.au

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