Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ heartbreaking opus ‘The Boatman’s Call’
A few poignant major chords, then the croon of, “I don’t believe in an interventionist God, but I know darling that you do,” and so begins a masterpiece. If I were God, I wouldn’t have the heart to reveal myself after a first line like that. I would lovingly stay well away to protect the humble, heartfelt demurring of humans from my heavy-handed, all-consuming truths. In my infinite benevolent wisdom, I would know that to intervene at this late stage in the game would do nothing other than reveal that everything happens for a reason, which is already a well-considered possibility anyhow. In the process, I would make redundant the hopeful boon of art that offers salvation from suffering by reckoning with this quandary – art like Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ tenth studio album, The Boatman’s Call.
The Bad Seeds’ previous outing, Murder Ballads, offered a dark anthology that documented everything from crimes of passion to crimes of the utterly insane. Only a year on, Cave invites you to curl up in the womb of his piano and feel the quilted warmth of tender honesty.
You should always judge an album by its cover and in this instance, the world presented is the colour and hue of sombre monochrome, punctuated by a title cast in the deep maroon of arterial blood. This sparse, minimalist and reverent styling bleeds through onto the record. The thoughtful profile that Cave enacts on the sleeve, likewise, spells a departure from the gaudy violence of previous releases in favour of personal ruminations.
However, it would be a mistake to think that these personal reflections resulted in a more insular album with The Boatman’s Call. By contrast, the record is a singing invocation that proves deeply affecting, not just as a document of Cave’s hardships, but also in a wider reflective sense. The personal is transposed into something universal by the transcendent manner in which Cave approaches his inner turmoil. The battles he was facing in his private life leading up to the album may well have acted as fuel, but they are tantamount to nothing more than impetus when it comes to the resultant evolving mass.
From the towering opener that summons the divine as a measuring stick of devotion to the biblical readings of Luke:24 in ‘Brompton Oratory’, the notion of divinity is the spiritual home for the record. Cave permeates the album with religious imagery to compassionately embalms the music with Cathedralic reverence. As Cave explains himself: “Personally, I need to see the world through metaphors, symbols and images. It is through images that I can engage meaningfully with the world. The personalising of this invisible notion of the spirit is necessary for me to fully understand it. I find that using the word ‘Christ’ as the actualising symbol of the eternal goodness in all things extremely useful. The Christ in everything makes sense to me — I can see it — and helps me to act more compassionately within the world.”
The album’s compassionate approach – uncompromising but devoid of any cynicism – reflects the evolution of Cave as a songwriter and performer. The fact that the soulful entreaty of ‘People Ain’t No Good’ went on to feature on the soundtrack of Shrek 2 shows how far the goth-Sinatra had come from his days in ‘The Birthday Party’. That is not to besmirch the tremendous work that The Birthday Party produced, rather to summon a point of contrast in terms of songwriting scope; it would be incredulous for any of their screeching paraphernalia-laden profanity to be anywhere near a kid’s movie. However, the same caustic energy remains on The Boatman’s Call, it has merely mutated into a more considered approach to craft and a dose of wise temperance.
In this respect, the album is not entirely a shocking sombre style change. The album seems more like the flower of a predestined future, seeded by the internal marriage of Cave’s sincerity, unfettered candour and the craft of the Bad Seeds themselves. Murder Ballads rattled the rafters with shocks, scares and cacophony, The Boatman’s Call reaches the same exultant heights with a shot of purified emotion.
The production and arrangements are sparse and unassuming, offering the perfect pillow-propped platform for Cave’s dreamy wordplay. There is not much to report in terms of soundscape and on this instance, that is a glowing appraisal. There is no use for the chaos of noise in a message this clear.
From start to finish, the record transfigures the very human experience of the desolation and discerning that comes with heartbreak into the resonant beauty of shared experience. The Boatman’s Call recalibrates public perception of the spookiest man in music and it does so with such a lack of conceit that it proves absolutely seamless. Rarely has a masterpiece ever been so humble; rarely has anything so humble ever been so profound.
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