Album Review: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Good Son

After the intense Tender Prey, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds returned in 1990 with The Good Son.  It initially feels a little disappointing after the heights of its predecessor.  Cave is very much in balladeer mode here on tracks like Foi Na Cruz and The Ship Song.  The title track morphs from chain-gang chant, through Cave rant to become a sort of torch song.  It sounds all over the shop.

 

They turn in some really dramatic goth-ballads, like Sorrow's Child and The Weeping Song.  The Hammer Song dials up the intensity with vibraphone and crashing percussion, while Lament is almost the quintessential Cave ballad with its sweeping faux-strings.  They have time to fit in the glam-stomp of The Witness Song before returning to crooning on Lucy.

It's probably the first Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds album in their back catalogue that you could play to your parents/grandparents/whoever but after the thrills of Tender Prey, this one suffers by comparison.  Better to take this one on its own merits and let it wash over you.

Album Review: Blake Babies - Earwig

Before Juliana Hatfield embarked on her solo career she sang in Boston-based Blake Babies. Their second album, released in 1989, was where she began to lay the ground work for her solo career and find her voice (yes, those girlish tones).

For those unfamiliar with Blake Babies/Juliana Hatfield, the album is a jangly, clean guitars and riffing, semi-rockers. Opener Cesspool is quite anthemic as the album goes, more riff-based than jangly. It's fairly atypical of the album, most tracks being midpaced jangly indie pop.

The quieter tracks are quite successful, sparser music allowing the songs to breathe on tracks like You Don't Give Up, showcasing John Strohm's subtle guitar skills. Evan Dando appears on this album adding bass and ropey backing vocals to jangle-rockers like Rain and Lament to great effect, while Strohm plays some great clean lead guitar parts in the midsection of Alright.

Even the cover of the Stooges' Loose turns out reasonably well, though Hatfield certainly doesn't inhabit the song like Iggy Pop does! The songs never outstay their welcome, most of them lasting no more than 3 minutes, and they would appeal to any fan of 80s indie pop.