Murder Ballads

I liked it more than other Nick Cave stuff on here. It was pretty good

2. Nope

Nobody makes dark, sinister, and brooding as beautiful as Nick Cave. Love the guest spots from PJ when Kylie too. Favorite track: Where the Wild Roses Grow

About like all Nick Cave. Meh. 2.5/5

ê vozerão, hein

achei o conceito legal, mas algumas dão bastante soninho viu, apesar de terem outras legais. mas a música de 14 minutos lombrou o batalhão pra mim, que canseira!!

Gross.

Nick Cave can stop trying to prove how weird and cool he is any time.

Kinda sounds like if Meat Loaf couldn't sing. Also, it has all these murder stories but doesn't mention the best murder song of all time: https://genius.com/Tim-robinson-the-day-robert-palins-murdered-me-lyrics

59 minutes of singing about murder is too many minutes singing about murder.

Really great gothic folk. Love how dark and macabre it is. Definitely think it is a tad front loaded. Not that anything is bad, just a song like The Kindness of Strangers didn't hit me as hard, being more of a "sweet" ballad when the rest of the album stuck strongly to the really heavy and dark gothic folk vibes. O'Malley's Bar is a tad long, but great itself. Love when Nick Cave is in this mode. Up Jumped the Devil from Tender Prey operates on the same wavelength, just more horror than gothic folk.

sick as fuckkkkkkk

Does what it says on the tin! Some really visceral imagery. Loved ‘The Curse of Millhaven’. Reminded me of The Pogues and then Shane shows up for the last number!

Does exactly what it says on the tin... Songs about death. "Where The Wild Roses Grow" gets a lot of the plaudits but this entire album is dark and menacing, both beautiful and violent...

He's very effective at creating this cinematic film noire mood musically to convey the style and atmosphere to go with his dark storytelling songs. Dark bass grooves, clinking piano hooks, huge echoey drums, tremolo guitars and light orchestral touches. He's also very effective at using his voice to create the main character/narrator: a wretched debauched staggering low life inhabiting a nasty urban underbelly. Wierd mismatch between the album and the cover though. His voice is less grating than Tom Waits, but it's the same deal basically. This is the best of his I've heard so far.

Why was that?

I struggle with a full album of Nick’s voice. A track or two is fine, but it wears on me after a while.

Probably my least favorite Cave so far, but not bad by any means.

3.5/5

I’m at a 5.

This is the second time we’ve gotten Nick Cave, and while I liked “Henry’s Dream”, my big thing with that album was just a big disconnect between the bombast of the instrumentation & the rather plain storytelling that accompanied some of the tracks. This album remedies that in the best way possible, giving the same sort of storytelling tone as “John Finn’s Wife” did, but expanded out for most of the runtime here. That creates a much more satisfying top to bottom album, powered not only by the strength of its lyricism, but pulling out much more measured & intentional vocal performances that fit each track. Special shoutouts to both PJ Harvey & Kylie Minogue, who absolutely kill it on their features.

Obviously, all of these tracks (save for the last one, kind of) are based on titular “murder ballads”. If you hate death (or every track having a similar subject matter), you’re not gonna like this album, and if you like death, you might really like this one (especially on “O’Malley’s Bar”). For my money’s worth, I think these are pretty well written & they’re certainly well performed. Yes, some of them are a little cheesy, and a few of them are a little awkward (namely “Lovely Creature” & “The Kindness of Strangers”), but I never once found myself bored throughout the 59 minute runtime of this album, which is a pretty good sign.

Part of that is from how many tracks still manage to infuse a lot of humor, despite the morbid tones present throughout this thing. “The Curse of Millhaven” & “O’Malley’s Bar” fit the bill for me here, with the former acting as a sort of 7-minute Irish drinking song about the biggest menace in the most cursed town in the world, and the latter acting as Nick Cave doing his best impression of a deranged Batman villain, killing without a care in the world & monologuing while doing it, in one of the most entertaining 14-minute tracks I’ve ever heard. I’d also be remiss to not acknowledge Nick Cave dropping so many “motherfuckers” in the span of 5 minutes on “Stagger Lee” that you could say he’s doing a Limp Bizkit impression a few years early.

All in all, I just think it’s a damn good album; lots of fun variety throughout, and captivating enough storytelling (despite some repetitive themes) that it made a whole hour fly by pretty quickly. It’s not gonna be for everyone, but if your ear is more attuned to the cinematic tones this album reaches for, it should click well enough to at least give this a 4. For my ears, it’s a pretty easy 5.

The Good: We’ve managed to plant seeds…
The Bad: Do I have to say it?…
The Ugly: How these ballads left me…

There is a universe where Men in Black rule, and I am not talking about the kind who need to go chase after aliens. This is a universe where gloom and doom, at least the way that they present themselves, is all the rage, and people will throw themselves at the feet of these Men in Black, and herald them as kings… It is the universe where Johnny Cash and Nick Cave vie for supremacy…

I don’t live in that universe…

So why have I being dragged into it?

I’ve listened to the album, I can put the notch on my belt… and dish out 2* as there was nothing that stood out for me, shame on those who want to live in the MiB universe...

Took a little bit to warm up to it but i ended up enjoying it after awhile. Quality isnt consistent but the good was pretty good

Interesting and pretty unique album. Probably won't revisit, I don't hate it, just not my cup of tea. 2.5/5. Rounding up to 3.