In Praise of.....The Good Son by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.

I can hear'em now. "B-b-b-but Alex, surely you mean From Her to Eternity or The First Born is Dead...or maybe Tender Prey, right?" No, goddammit I'm praising The Good Son, and it's my goddamn favorite Nick Cave album. And I'll tell ya why.

Because it's Springtime.

I got ahold of The Good Son as an advance cassette in the Spring of 1990. I'd been working paylessly at a crappy music `zine which shall remain nameless alongside one-&-future estimably cool (though not at the time) Brit journodude, Kris Needs (himself a huge Cave fan). Kris would suck down 40 oz.s of Olde English and play this tape on a constant rotation while we did our best to sift through the piles of poorly scribbled pabulum that was the magazine. I'd been a passive Cave fan by way of Tender Prey and the earlier tracks like "Tupelo" and the like, but this album was different. A calmer and gentler Nick Cave. Sure there are still moments of harrowing exhortation and hellfire, but for the most part -- The Good Son is more steeped in smoldering atmospherics and understated elegance rather than bug eyed savagery (as typified Cave's earlier stuff with the mighty Birthday Party).

At first came the scoffs. Ooh, Nick's lost his balls, etc. Wrong. Nick fucking grew up! But he could still whip things up into a hellbent frenzy (notably on "The Hammer Song" and "The Witness Song"). While I adore those tracks of foam-mouthed fury, it's the quieter, more cinematic pieces like the elegiac "The Ship Song" and the quietly mournful "Lucy" (later covered sloppily by Shane MacGowan on a split single with Cave-o) that bring this album home for me.

But once again, why? `Cos it reminds me of Springtime. I remember walking up to Columbia University (to drop some shit off for another slave of this periodical, Neil Strauss) and playing the album repeatedly on ye olde walkman. It just reminds of me of the changing of the seasons in NYC. And that's a great thing.

Of course, you may beg to differ.