After goth pioneers
the Birthday Party called it quits in 1983,
singer/songwriter Nick Cave assembled
the Bad Seeds, a
post-punk supergroup featuring former
Birthday Party guitarist Mick Harvey on drums, ex-
Magazine bassist
Barry Adamson, and
Einstürzende Neubauten guitarist Blixa Bargeld. With
the Bad Seeds,
Cave continued to explore his obsessions with religion, death, love, America, and violence with a bizarre, sometimes self-consciously eclectic hybrid of
blues,
gospel,
rock, and arty
post-punk, although in a more subdued fashion than his work with
the Birthday Party.
Cave also allowed his literary aspirations to come to the forefront; the lyrics are narrative prose, heavy on literary allusions and myth-making, and take some inspiration from
Leonard Cohen.
Cave's gloomy lyrics, dark musical arrangements, and deep baritone voice recall the albums of
Scott Walker, who also obsessed over death and love with a frightening passion. However,
Cave brings a hefty amount of
post-punk experimentalism to
Walker's epic dark pop.
Cave released his first album with
the Bad Seeds,
From Her to Eternity, in 1984, which contained a noteworthy cover of
Elvis Presley's "In the Ghetto," foreshadowing much of
Cave's style and subject matter on the follow-up
The Firstborn Is Dead.
Kicking Against the Pricks, an all-covers album, broke the band in England with the help of "The Singer," which hit number one on the U.K. independent charts. The album also strengthened
Cave's reputation as an original interpreter and a vocal stylist of note. Following 1986's
Your Funeral...My Trial,
Cave took a two-year hiatus from recording, partially to appear in Wim Wenders' 1987 film Wings of Desire, and then returned with
Tender Prey, which featured
Cramps guitarist Kid Congo Powers and
Cave's strongest vocal performance up to that point.
Cave's productivity picked up immensely over the next two years after he kicked a heroin habit. He had two books (1988's King Ink, a collection of lyrics, plays, and prose, and 1989's And the Ass Saw the Angel, a novel) published; appeared in the 1989 Australian film Ghosts...of the Civil Dead as a prisoner; recorded a
soundtrack to the film with Harvey and Bargeld; and released 1990's
The Good Son, his most relaxed, quiet album.
Cave received his due as one of the leading figures in alternative rock when he was invited to perform on the 1994 edition of the Lollapalooza tour to promote his
Let Love In album. Early in 1996, he released
Murder Ballads, a collection of songs about murder.
Murder Ballads became
Cave's most commercially successful album to date, and, with typical perversity, he followed it with the introspective and personal
The Boatman's Call in early 1997. A
spoken word release, Secret Life of the Love Song, followed in 1999.
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