Few artists in the modern era have covered as much ground as Nick Cave. Dig Daniel Dylan Wray, dig!
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are an unusual band in that they don’t have one essential classic album that defines them. Or even a classic period. There is no one must-buy album of theirs that jumps out above all overs. Instead, what they have created is an eclectic yet coherent body of work that is almost unfathomably consistent in its greatness, innovation and sense of evolution. 2003’s Nocturama is perhaps the only album that could be deemed a dud (absent here for that reason), but The Bad Seeds have managed to stay on track for over 35 years now. In fact, the band are more popular than ever, playing the biggest venues of their career – and on the back of two albums of slow, sombre, often strange, experimental music. Their trajectory is a rare and refreshing one, in which a lack of compromise and a determined sense of vision has paid off in terms of tangible success. Their discography reflects this, too.
Across a 40-year period – if you include Cave’s earlier bands, The Birthday Party and the Boys Next Door, who feature here too, you see a sense of growth and change but also a tone, personality and presence that remains distinct. The Bad Seeds have been a band that have weathered the storms of many trends, fashions and fads – from grunge to Britpop to rave – yet their refusal to change who they fundamentally are has resulted in their longevity and consistency across the decades. There’s no iffy album to be found in this list, with the must-have sound or recording technique of the time stamped all over it; despite perpetually changing, growing and mutating, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have always sounded very much like Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. Imitated by many, but never the imitators. Where possible, our Top 40 albums, EPs and singles quotes Discogs Median prices for UK pressings and is in our order of merit.
40 DOOR, DOOR
MUSHROOM 1979
One from Cave’s Pre-Birthday Party band, The Boys Next Door. With slightly more polished and new wave tendencies, this captures Cave and co. in their real infancy. There’s the odd moment of rugged charm, but really the entire album is captured by Shivers, a ballad written by a 16-year-old Rowland S Howard that still resonates movingly today.
DISCOGS MEDIAN £43
39 THE WEEPING SONG
MUTE 1990
A nursery rhyme-like song between father and son (Blixa Bargeld and Nick Cave). It possesses a woozy, wonky rhythm, with a strange seasickn
