NICK CAVE

nocturama

CD/LP, Mute

 

Not a lot has changed, a lot has changed. “Nocturama” will give you everything you expected and wanted and more. Except, if you only know “where the wild roses grow” than you might be disappointed, but then, every record by Nick Cave will disappoint you. With album number 13 (excluding live-albums, movie-soundtracks, earlier bands and side-projects) it gets quite hard to sum up a career in just a few words, with one exception: “Nocturama” is a really good record, because, one, Nick Caveis unable to make a bad record, and second, it reaches far and deep into the history and the future of Nick Cave’s own career.

In the meantime, I guess, everyone has read and seen a lot of features on “Nocturama” in various media, and I have to say, that those I have seen, were quite good overall, which is the merit of Nick Cave, methinks. Thank goodness, the media-hype around “where the wild roses grow” has calmed down, now that Kylie Minogue has rocketed off in her own career (again). Now Cave can go and look for more traditional duet-partners, such as Chris Bailey – which reminds me of his duet with Shane McGowan – legend-wise. And let’s not talk about the average pop-fan and his reaction. There are other, more pressing matters and questions on my mind. Such as:

This is something  thing I started to wonder about, when I read that they only spent two weeks in the studio, playing the music from notes and scribbles, nothing really worked out but making it up as they went along. Which was a good choice for this time around, because you can feel and hear the energy and freshness in these songs. The exuberant and outpouring “Babe I’m on fire” might be the best example for this. But, do you remember, that Nick Cave tells everyone, that he spends days in the office like everyone, nine to five? Obviously, he has a little office somewhere that he goes to during the day to write music and then comes home just like any other dad would do? Well, if all he had with him for this recording session were scribbled notes for ten or eleven songs, then what did he do all that time in the last two years? Sure, he wrote hundred verses for “Babe I am on fire” but that doesn’t take him a year?

In the end, Nick Cave is also building up a personae that he presents to the media and accordingly to the world – the picture of the world-weary and secluded poet, that sends his messages to a society he doesn’t like and that loves him for that. But the facts do paint another picture. I remember his appearances in the Vienna school for poetry – cards 40 to 50 Euro a pop to hear him lecture about the “lovesong” and then play a few songs. I own various records with soundtracks to unknown movies (or theatrical pieces – I can’t remember right now). And then he also has to tour the globe to play concerts – no way about it. And there is no way to combine touring the world with leading a nine-to-five family life, isn’t there? And maybe, deciding to spend not longer than two weeks in a studio in Australia – which is quite far away from his homebase in London by the way – wasn’t so much done by choice, but because all the musicians have very complex and pressing itineraries. Especially Blixa Bargeld, with all his theatrical endeavours, art-stuff and the Einstürzenden Neubauten coming together again. Maybe they couldn’t find any other time?

Well, in the end, it doesn’t matter one way or another, because you will never know how people truly are. You don’t know that if you meet them on a daily basis and talk to them a lot personally, and so you will never know if you just listen to their music and read about them in magazines. And it doesn’t matter because it is not important. Everyone in Nick Cave’s position would make up a personae which to present to the world. Because this is a harmful and dangerous world and you don’t want to get hurt. It is a safety process. Finally it doesn’t matter, because it is the music that matters and if the songs are good and the record sounds great, what more do you want? Nick Cave is an artist who gives you parts of his soul in his music – no matter how much you try you cannot present a personae that is not part of yourself, what irony is that? – but you are never concerned with a part, you want the whole thing. You won’t get it. But with “Nocturama” you might get a lot more than you wanted anyway.

02/2003