The Nick Cave Top 75 Countdown (#45-41) & This Week's Statistics

Hello, my friends, old and new! It's Sunday, so you probably know what's going to follow; the Nick Cave Top 75 Countdown and this week's statistics... Also, it says so on the title, duh.

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. Nick Cave did not score just Australian, American, or English films: Días De Gracia (Days Of Grace, 2011) was a Mexican film directed by Everardo Gout. Cave scored the movie with the help of his writing partner of late, Warren Ellis (other contributing musicians included Atticus and Leopold Ross, Claudia Sarne, and Shigeru Umebayashi. This is the title track, written by Cave and Ellis:

At #45 we find Lime Tree Arbour, a song on one of Nick's best album's, The Boatman's Call (1997). If one were to split the Bad Seeds' career into two halves, The Boatman's Call would be the fulcrum. Its arresting minimalism and tender-hearted ruminations on love stand in stark contrast to the first act of their career, which culminated a year earlier in the bloodbath of Murder Ballads. While Cave had already shown us many a time that he knew how to write a fine ballad, he had never dedicated a whole album to this type of quiet softness. Most of the songs feature only piano, bass, and Cave exploring the nuances of his own baritone. Lime Tree Arbour is Cave at his most classicist - verse chorus verse chorus filled with unadorned yet powerful language. The chorus speaks to the type of omnipresent love most often found in the New Testament ("There is a hand that protects me/ And I do love her so"). While some have seen the 'boatman' as Charon - the ferryman of the dead in Greek mythology - this is the rare Cave love song where sadness plays only the most minor of roles.

This is live at Le Transbordeur Lyon, France, 8th June 2001:

At #44 is The Lyre of Orpheus, from the double album, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (2004). It sure seems as though Nick slams the door on the notion of art saving the world on The Lyre of Orpheus's title track. In Cave's sardonic rewrite of the Greek myth, the music created by Orpheus' instrument spreads across the Earth like a murderous pestilence until God gets pissed and throws him down into hell where Eurydice threatens to shove the lyre up Orpheus' "orifice." Warren Ellis' swampy bouzouki and Thomas Wydler's more stylized drumming move the band in the tense, skeletal swirl where chorus and Cave meet the music in a loopy dance.

This is a live version at LSO St Lukes, for UK's TV channell BBC 4:

At #43 is another song from The Boatman's Call (1997), People Ain't No Good. The song is also found on the soundtrack to the animated hit film Shrek 2 (2004) - this is lyrically both cynical and ironic. The vocal is delivered in fine fashion with a an uncluttered piano based instrumental backing. Somehow this ode to negativity manages to be both poignant and pure Nick Cave.

This song once more references the end of a love affair, which has no doubt brought him to be in this state of mind, and it is set to an arrangement that wouldn't shame Tom Waits in his Asylum Years, full of brushed drums, vibes and piano while radiating a delicate anger. On this track, the seam of dark humour running all through the album is very apparent. When you're in the state he's in on this album, sometimes you do have to laugh bitterly at the low which you're in. It's just a person, after all.

This is live in Poland, 1996:

The song at #42, Stranger Than Kindness, is found on the album Your Funeral... My Trial (1986). Not written by Cave, this Anita Lane/Blixa Bargeld composition is one of the highpoints of the Your Funeral… My Trial album and a band favorite. The song takes the quiet menace and turns it up to 11, built around bass loops and weird noises. It is unsettling and also hypnotic in its spiraling melody.

This is what Cave himself has to say:

"We really hit on something there. We found it really beautiful – to me there's some really delicate, strange abstracted kinds of songs, that I loved. One of my favourite Bad Seeds songs is Stranger Than Kindness, which has a kind of unearthly beauty about it, and I think that's largely because I had nothing to do with writing it. I mean by that I don't understand it so much, and it remains mysterious to me, and very beautiful – Anita Lane wrote it, and Blixa wrote the music. I really want to say something about Bargeld's guitar playing, because on those first four records the stuff he was doing was extraordinary. He had this knack of making the guitar sound like anything other than a guitar."

This is from the album Live from KCRW (2013), recorded on 18 April 2013 at the Apogee Studio in Los Angeles, California, US:

Finally for today, at #41, we find Up Jumped the Devil, from another of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' best albums, Tender Prey (1988). Up Jumped The Devil shimmies with an almost vaudevillian Delta blues vibe, while Cave's having a blast playing the hammy magnificent bastard (it seems he wrote this song just so he could be that character). However, Nick's voice and the seething bassline imbibes the song with a sense of genuine menace just the same.

This is live in Brussels, Belgium, in 2015:

Now, let's continue with last week's statistics; there was a 7% increase in the weekly number of visits. As far as the stories were concerned, the latest ones did well, as well as a couple of evergreens, George Maharis and Freddie Jackson. Also, readers are displaying renewed interest on The Doors Top 50 Countdown.

As far as countries are concerned, the United Kingdom is still reigning supreme for a fourth week in a row, while France is an easy second. Canada and Turkey are also doing great, Turkey having just replaced Cyprus at #9 on the all-time list. Otherwise, South Africa did well but not as well as last week, while Australia, Spain, and Poland each had a good showing.

Here are this week's Top 10 countries:

1. the United Kingdom

2. France

3. the United States

4. Turkey

5. Canada

6. Greece

7. South Africa

8. Australia

9. Spain

10. Poland

Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last statistics (alphabetically): Albania, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Austria, the Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, China, Croatia, Curaçao, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Happy to have you all!

And here's the all-time Top 10:

1. France = 26.0%

2. the United States = 25.6%

3. the United Kingdom = 13.4%

4. Greece = 6.4%

5. Russia = 2.7%

6. Germany = 1.7%

7. Canada = 1.38%

8. Italy = 1.24%

9. Turkey = 1.09%

10. Cyprus = 0.96%

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