The Nick Cave Top 75 Countdown (#40-36) & This Week's Statistics

Hello, my friends, old and new! The week is almost over, which means it's Nick Cave time once again.

Before the countdown continues, however, let's begin with our bonus track, from one of the soundtracks that Nick Cave wrote in his long and illustrious career. In 2012, Nick Cave, along with his writing partner of late, scored an important documentary, called West Of Memphis. The film went on to win multiple awards, the BAFTA (the British Oscar) for Best Documentary Film among them. Here's part of the soundtrack:

With guitarist/keyboardist Roland Wolf and Cramps/Gun Club veteran Kid Congo Powers on guitar added to the ranks, along with guest appearances from old member Hugo Race, the Seeds reached 1988 with their strongest album yet, the insanely powerful, gripping Tender Prey. Rather than simply redoing what they'd already done, Nick Cave and company took their striking musical fusions to deeper and higher levels all around, with fantastic consequences. At #40 we find a song from this album, Slowly Goes the Night, maybe one of the first songs to really show Cave's knack for singing ballads.

A ballad, yes, but the mood was as dark as Nick's more savage offerings. This is the intro and the first verse:

Darling, that morning you chose to go
I woke in my boots and clothes
You dig in my cards, stole all my cash
Even my 500 dollar suit was slashed
And I just lay there watching the sun fall down from the sky
Not wanting to open the letter
But opening it anyway
And seeing those two words

Lover, lover, goodbye

So slowly goes the night

Next to me lies your body

Playing like a map of some forbidden land

And I trace the ghost of your bones with my trembling hand

Dark is my night

And darker is my day

Yeah I must have been blind, out of my mind

I never never saw the warning sign

How goes it?

It goes lonely

It goes slowly

At #39 and #38 are two songs from the excellent album No More Shall We Part (2001), one that includes two musical directors, the ubiquitous Mick Harvey and Dirty Three violinist Warren Ellis, who craft a sonic atmosphere whose textures deepen and widen Cave's most profound and beautiful lyrics to date. First, at #39, is the oddly Bowie-esque God Is In The House. The song marks the album's blackly comic high point, a satirical portrait of a devout small-town community worthy of Dylan Thomas. In this grotesquely sanitized backwater, there is no place for "queer-bashers with tire jacks" (had he read Brokeback Mountain - because it would take four more years for the film to appear?) or "goose-stepping twelve-stepping Teetotalitarianists". Nick Cave's genius is to clothe these spiked observations in a piano melody of lilting loveliness, an iron fist in a velvet glove.

This is live at LSO St Lukes, broadcast by BBC 4, UK:

In between the album's storm-tossed psycho-ballads and theological debates lies a loose narrative about the healing power of love, which is the song at #38, the title song from No More Shall We Part. Cave had been recently married, but naturally the celebratory aspects of wedded bliss have passed him by - thus the grimly funny No More Shall We Part alternates between trapped terror and weary resignation as "The contracts are drawn up/The ring is locked upon the finger." Even so, this is a beautiful ghost of a tune which blossoms elegantly from sobbing psalm to cosmic meditation on destiny and liberty. Opening with a lone vocal section, a simple piano and bass combo soon anchors itself around Cave's gorgeous, deep voice, and once again, the lyrics delivered are just nothing short of wonderful.

This is live on the French TV show Nulle Part Ailleurs, 2001:

At #37 is a song called There She Goes, My Beautiful World from the album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (2004). One of the stand-outs from the rock half of the Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus two-parter, There She Goes, My Beautiful World was 21st Century Cave at his best, leading a gospel choir in a passionate Pop Noir.

There She Goes My Beautiful World picks at the subject of writer's block, snapping disconsolately at other artists' means of finding inspiration:

"Karl Marx squeezed his carbuncles

While writing Das Kapital

And Gauguin, he buggered off, man

And went all tropical

While Philip Larkin stuck it out

In a library in Hull

And Dylan Thomas died drunk in

St. Vincent's hospital"

The Western wrangle of the melody references Morricone's desert cowboy groove against a swirling cacophony of drums, bashing piano, and the chorus swelling on the refrain. The pace is fantastic; its drama and musical dynamics are pitched taut, with lulls in all the right places.

This is a live version for Channel 4, UK:

Finally for today, at #36, we end as we started: with a song from Tender Prey (1988). This time, the song is called Mercy and it's a suitable fusion of the post-punk and folk influences the Bad Seeds were best known for at this point.

Out of every single corner and off every imagined page, his words leap like snakes: "My death, it almost bored me/ So often was it told." This nocturnal melodrama is a song about John the Baptist. Tender Prey seems like a story or chronicle in some way and from the beginning of the album a dark storm cloud begins to brew, but it is isn't until Mercy to where it begins to drizzle with Blixa Bargeld's shivery slide guitar and Wolf's backing vocals.

This is live in Berlin:

Now, let's continue with last week's statistics; after more than a month of a continuous weekly increase in the number of visits, this week there was a steep drop: the number of visits is less than a third of what they were last week. As far as the stories were concerned, only the story of Maria Callas performed as well as expected. Perhaps the fact that this was the Holy Week for much of the Christian world had a part in this... By the way, happy Easter to everybody who's celebrating!

As far as countries are concerned, in this week of low flight, the United States flew higher than everybody else, reversing its downward trend and being a breath away from France on the all-time list. France didn't have a good week. The United Kingdom increased its all-time percentage, but it slowed down considerably compared to the previous weeks. Canada also had a slight all-time increase, while Greece, Germany, Cyprus, and Turkey kept their all-time percentage equal to last week. Turkey having just replaced at #9 on the all-time list. Russia and Italy joined France in the week's negative list, while Australia, South Africa, Spain, and the Netherlands each had a good showing.

Here are this week's Top 10 countries:

1. the United States

2. the United Kingdom

3. France

4. Greece

5. Canada

6. Australia

7. South Africa

8. Spain

9. Turkey

10. the Netherlands

Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last statistics (alphabetically): Albania, American Samoa, Argentina, Austria, the Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Bermuda, Botswana, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, China, Curaçao, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Grenada, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Happy to have you all!

And here's the all-time Top 10:

1. France = 25.8%

2. the United States = 25.7%

3. the United Kingdom = 13.6%

4. Greece = 6.4%

5. Russia = 2.6%

6. Germany = 1.7%

7. Canada = 1.41%

8. Italy = 1.18%

9. Turkey = 1.09%

10. Cyprus = 0.95%

That's all for today, folks. Till the next one!