The album Nick Cave called “important” for the Bad Seeds
Nick Cave has come a long way from the wild punk he started out as. His evolution as an artist is fascinating, as slowly, the poetry of his music took centre stage, and the rest reshaped around it, leading to the masterful compositions he delivers now. Along the way, one album stood out as a clear turning point for both his audience and Cave himself.
Sometimes, change happens so slowly that is hard to even notice it. Over time, things naturally morph and evolve with even Cave’s early punk records showing signs of development as his skill, and let’s face it, his budget, grew. But other times, change comes in an instant. One singular event can shatter everything, forcing a sharp shift in perspective and leaving us to pick up the pieces and rebuild into something that will inevitably look different.
That happened in the mid-1990s when Cave gave his heart to and then had his heart broken by PJ Harvey. It was a brief yet passionate affair as the punk seemed to find a softer side, writing in a love letter to the musician, “Polly Jean, I love you,” he wrote. “I love the texture of your skin, the taste of your saliva, the softness of your ears. I love every inch and every part of your entire body. From your toes to the beautifully curved arches of your feet, to the exceptional shade and warmth of your dark hair. I need you in my life, I hope you need me too.”
But their relationship was fainted by their mutual drive. Cave wrote in his Red Hand Files, “Songwriting completely consumed me at that time. It was not what I did but what I was. It was the very essence of me. Polly’s commitment to her own work was probably as narcissistic and egomaniacal as my own.” However, really, the crux of their issue was his drug use as he recalled the moment she rang him up and broke the affair off, “I was so surprised I almost dropped my syringe.”
In the wake of it all, a heartbroken Cave suddenly found his songwriting process changed. He seemed softer and suddenly unable to keep his personal life from slipping through the cracks and into his work. He decided to lean in. “Mever one to waste a good crisis, I set about completing The Boatman’s Call,” he said.
From everything that came before, the 1997 album was totally different. It was a whole new sound for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in that, really, the Bad Seeds were nowhere to be found. Instead, the record is predominantly Cave at a piano with the band joining in occasionally but never with the fierceness and energy as their other albums.
But even that stemmed from this heartbreak. Still in that demotivated, depressive period after the loss, Cave found himself bored and exhausted. “We were mixing Murder Ballads, which at that time, I didn’t really have the patience to do. So I just went out to an adjacent studio, and started to play these songs,” he said. With so much on his mind and no desire to do anything other than be within those thoughts, The Boatman’s Call was a necessary reaction that came without effort; as Cave said, “That sound was kind of an accident.”
However, some say there are no accidents. To some, this was fate stepping in and causing Cave to change course, setting him on the path that he would keep wandering down into more poetic, lyrically-led and atmospheric works. “It was an important record for us,” Cave admitted, “I guess I had those songs, and they inspired me to write songs along a similar line.”
The marked difference in The Boatman’s Call, despite being an accident, acted as a bridge or a catalyst to a new musical chapter, one that directly led to the Cave we know now.
