album // No More Shall We Part
Nick Cave's No More Shall We Part takes its cues from the jazz and torch songs from the past, cut through with moments of wild intensity and beautiful, romantic love songs. The result is a polished, delicate addition to the Nick Cave catalogue that finds our singer intertwining his personalities as harrowed avenger, tender romantic and supreme story-teller, all wrapped up in thrilling musical arrangements from The Bad Seeds - Mick Harvey (guitar), Blixa Bargeld (guitar), Thomas Wydler (drums), Martyn P Casey (bass), Conway Savage (organ) and Warren Ellis (violin) - and also featuring orchestrations from Mick Harvey and Warren Ellis, as well as backing vocals from the folk music sisters Kate and Anna McGarrigle For a highly revealing insight into the working methods of this creative and always thrilling band, you should watch the 'making of' featurette on 2003's God Is In The House DVD, which shows them hard at work crafting this sensational album.
'No More Shall We Part' contains soft accompaniment, piano and brushed cymbals, as well as a full string orchestra, with Cave offering up some pained vocals full of love and angst. The next track, 'Hallelujah', begins with some sensational folksy viola, extremely sorrowful piano, and sonic textures from Blixa. The song recounts a story of writers block, getting lost and helpless, and realising one's dependency. This is certainly one of the most mournful pieces Cave has produced, but it is blessed with a truly uplifting chorus. Originally from 'The Flesh Made Word', 'Love Letter' is a swelling, string-soaked new version of this romantic and painfully moving song, with Cave's most Scott Walker-esque vocal,all leathery soaring honey tones.
'God Is In The House' tells the tale of a pretty, idyllic, utopian Christian village, far from the 'computer geeks' and 'queer bashers' of the big city, where everyone looks out for one another and all the animals are look after; it's a fairytale, a children's story so far removed from our own world delivered by the village's most ardent, enthusiastic resident. The track 'Oh My Lord' begins quietly, just vocals and piano, rising in intensity as the song progresses, reaching a wild cacophanous, rapturous conclusion, Blixa's guitar taking second fiddle to Warren Ellis' viola. The song tells the story of a man who becomes suddenly scared to death by the vision of his life, accomplishments and destiny, a world unhinged that suddenly makes sense. It's cathartic and chaotic, not necessarily about Cave's own life but the conclusion will be drawn thus. Only a very compassionate man could explain a highly amusing lyric like 'A man with plastic antlers presses his bum againt the glass' in the midst of an outwardly earnest 7 and a half minute track, if you can.
One of the most serenely meditative and ruminative tracks Cave has recorded, 'Sweetheart Come' is a sorrow-filled song of regret embellished by further soaring violins from Warren Ellis. By the time the McGarrigle sisters duet with Cave on the deceptively simple chorus, the song has an unnerving capacity to move you emotionally. Like 'Oh My Lord', the emotional twists and turns of 'My Sorrowful Wife' are captivating, opening up Cave's former hell-blown bluster with a truly thrilling noisy climax; here, however it is salvation and forgiveness that Cave seeks, not carnage, his futile attempt to convince his emotionally-estranged wife of his temporary insanity and compulsion. It's a work of genius connecting the emotional balladry Cave finds himself veering toward with his earlier work. Bargeld makes his most prevalent contribution to the album here, with a thick swell of guitar to muddy Ellis' frantically-bowed viola.
'We Came Along This Road' features a deceptively-simple piano and a luscious string accompaniment to produce what could be Cave and his sorrowful wife seeking some sort of reconciliation after the dust has settled - the issue is the same, but the imploring tone of the former track is replaced with a sense of resignation. According to Cave's South Bank Show documentary, the setting for 'Gates To The Garden' was a town (perhaps in Suffolk) where Cave frequently used to retreat in the 1980s to escape the temptations and demonic persuasion of England's capital, mostly to dry out and make an attempt at getting clean.
'Darker With The Day' is the perfect close to a highly moving album, finding Cave reprising the slightly higher-pitched vocal of the single 'As I Sat Sadly By Her Side', flanked by the wafty McGarrigle sisters. Cave manages to squeeze impossibly-long words into his lyrics, and the descending harmony of the line 'It grows darker with the day' adds a melancholy tang to what at first appears to be an almost euphoric song, a momentary flood of misery that reveals the track's true themes of lost love.