How to make a little history? Record an album like this, for a start.
The best Nick Cave quote I ever heard came from his closest American equivalent Jeffrey Lee Pierce: "The rehab clinic I was in was pretty trashy, but I hear the one that Nick Cave had was fabulous." It works like that because, to borrow another quote from Billy Corgan, "Nick Cave is one of those guys who absolutely refuses to suck." So sure, fabulous rehab clinics, because everything is worth doing right. And as yet he hasn't released a bad album, so that particular assessment has yet to collapse.
The thing is, though, that a lot of the faithful initially regarded Saint Nick's welcome to the decade as a washed-out semi-sellout. The bats were definitely not released on this album, the mercy seat was not on fire. But quite why elegance, croons in the spotlight and more besides were seen as wrong by some is something I still haven't figured out myself. You'd have figured the Kicking Against the Pricks album would have signaled that much, with covers of Gene Pitney and Jimmy Webb. But sometimes it has to be in your face, it seems.
The irony of course being that this is not an in-your-face album. Though there are moments, to be sure. The title track works the electric roar/blues-gospel fusion deal that one has come to expect from the man, but this time the Seeds hold back on the chorus, and Cave's tale of the prodigal son's brother collapses not into shrieks but vibes, strings, a swoon, gilt and silver lame, and feels not one whit less strong for it. Biblical imagery and a cold, cruel world set to sparkle; Pierre et Gilles, for one (or two) would be proud, which is why it makes sense that fellow lounge/seedy underside addict Marc Almond is a Cave fanatic and sometime collaborator (and why Almond's own long-time string arranger Billy McGee helps handle the orchestrations throughout).
So aside from brief irruptions, the ghost of the not-actually-dead Scott Walker hovers over the whole thing, long before he was recanonized by all the wrong people. The tension is strong, the moods blue, the arrangements spot on, the playing armed with a spark. If Sinatra albums actually sounded like this, I'd like Sinatra. "The Weeping Song" rumbles a tale of vengeance and dead dreams, Blixa Bargeld and Nick in a call and response probably nobody else could have imagined, snaking the beginning to "Something's Got a Hold of My Heart" as well, "Lament" starts off a bit scattato but then the chorus hits and you're swept along, "Lucy" ends it all with an elegant reflection.
And right at the center, "The Ship Song." When I heard that Gene -- of all rat bastards in the universe the miserable idiotic dungheaps in friggin' GENE for crying out loud -- covered this, the best scarred love lyric in ages, hand to your heart music, tears choked back just right and the world collapsed at last in that ruined romanticism so often and rightly claimed for the man, I declared my fatwa against them. It will not be lifted. You do not improve upon perfection.