SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS – LOVELY CREATURES – THE BEST OF NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS (1984-2014)

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds
Lovely Creatures – The Best Of Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds (1984-2014)
Mute Records

Compilations are a funny things.  When they are done well, they are like a new album in the artist’s catalog.  McCartney’s Wingspan , Erasure’s From Moscow to Mars, and Bowie’s Nothing Has Changed, come to mind,  to name just a few, are stellar examples of strong retrospectives.  .  You can add Nick Cave’s Lovely Creatures – The Best of 1984 – 2014 to this elite group.

This is not the first Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds compilation.  In 1998 The Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds was released.  It focused on the singles issued up to 1998.  Since 1998, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds have released a further five albums.  Their 2016 release Skeleton Tree is not included as part of this retrospective.  This album was put together in 2015 and for numerous reasons they kept the album as it was.  This being a double (or triple) CD set, Cave and co-founding member Mick Harvey have gone deeper into the Bad Seeds catalog and come up with this remarkable compilation.  For the record, other members of The Bad Seeds had input, but Cave and Harvey were the main curators of this collection.

The deluxe, triple CD set features 45 songs, plus a DVD of interviews, promo videos, and live performances.  For my money this is the treasure trove.  It is a lot of music, a lot of information, but it is all brilliant.  Fans of Cave and The Bad Seeds will not need any convincing, they may wonder why some songs are left off, and others included, but one cannot argue with the quality of the music.

Nor can one argue about the packaging and the presentation, stunning and well thought out. It is a beautiful package put together with a great deal of love and respect to the original material.

This set covers the first twenty years of this band and artist.  I am not going to comment on Cave’s unspeakable tragedy over the past few years, but rather the set that is available now. This is not a complete look at Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, but it is a nice sampler and excellent beginning for the uninitiated.

The CDs are well organized and well presented.  The compilation does not replace his catalog, but it does serve as a companion to those albums and sits comfortably alongside the other albums.  A brilliant set

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