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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds | No More Shall We Part

Don't start throwing marshmallows yet!
CD, Mute/PIAS

Tekst: Martÿn ter Haar

Publicatiedatum: 12 juni 2001

'No More Shall We Part' is a bit of a mixed bag. Cave refound his sense of humour, and there are more aggressive songs again. Cave even has a few biting lines for those who thought he was ready for retirement after the overload of piano ballads that comprised 'The Boatman's Call': "They claimed that I had lost the plot/Kept saying I was not/The man I used to be/They held their babes aloft/Threw marshmallows at the Security/And said that I'd grown soft/Call it intuition, call it a creeping suspicion/But their words of derision meant they hardly knew me" ('Oh My Lord'). Unfortunately, Cave provides the marshmallow throwers with new ammunition by putting too many sentimental crooners on the album again. And to make it worse, some are among the worst songs he's ever recorded: On 'And No More Shall We Part' he sings too much out of key. OK, so Cave was never Pavarotti, but the way he sings here makes all of the dogs on the block start to howl. 'We Came Along This Road' has a hideous string arrangement, more like something you'd expect on a Celine Dion album than on one from a band that features Warren Ellis, who's been promoted to official Bad Seeds status, on violin. And 'Gates to the Garden' is just bland. Claiming Cave has lost the plot would be unfair though, because there are also some very nice crooners on the album, such as the touching 'Love Letter' and the hilarious parody on small town life 'God Is in the House'. Even better are the songs that combine sophistication with aggression in a way that calls to mind the 'Let Love In' album, such as 'Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow', 'Oh My Lord', and the absolute highlight of the album, 'The Sorrowful Wife'. This is one of the many songs about Cave's recent marriage. Which doesn't mean the album is filled with happy songs (not that those were expected in the first place), because, optimist that he is, Cave believes he got more than he deserved and he will probably ruin it anyway. So 'The Sorrowful Wife' may start just a bit sarcastically with "I married my wife on the day of the eclipse/ Our friends awarded her courage with gifts", the next verse already goes "I made her a promise I could not deliver", and it ends with Cave screaming "I was blind, baby/I was a fool" over a pandemonium as can only be created by the combination of Ellis and guitarists Blixa Bargeld and Mick Harvey. Brilliant. 'We Came Along This Road' is instantly forgiven. We can only hope (ungrounded) guilt keeps tearing Cave apart like this.

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds/no-more-shall-we-part/301/
Meer Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds