Topic: Nick Cave's Best Song

[Rev+]

It's Lime Tree Arbour.

Or is it?  Nominate, you fantastic bastards!

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

It's The Ship Song but instead i'm going to say The Mercy Seat because I like change things up every now and again.

[sardines]

Henry Lee is under 4 minutes and so perfectly realised + that video. Crikey.

[Retinend]

Hammer Song, for me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9te0KPjXtM

[The Mollusk]

Yeah probably "The Mercy Seat" for me an' all. First song of his I heard as a teenager, at my uncle's insistence. Stuck with me ever since.

"My kill hand is called E.V.I.L., wears a wedding band that's good. 'Tis a long suffering shackle, collaring all that rebel blood" - I mean, fucking hell.

[kalowski]

I love..LOVE.. Papa Won't Leave You, Henry.
Personal faves are also Red Right Hand, O Children, Mercy Seat, Deanna, The Ship Song, I Had a Dream, Joe, Do You Love Me, Henry Lee, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!,  and what the hell Stagger Lee.
And nearly all of The Boatman's Call.

I've not had enough time to delve into Skeleton Tree and Push the Sky Away.

[Swoz_MK]

City of Refuge

[SteveDave]

Red Right Hand but the Arctic Monkeys version

[The Mollusk]

Red Right Hand but the Arctic Monkeys version

my man

[Jockice]

Dead Joe. I don't like his solo stuff much.

[non capisco]

'Jubilee Street' is up there, especially in its live incarnation with the choir giving it full helmet and everything speeding up and getting more intense at the end.

Talking of intense, 'From Her To Eternity' live.

[sevendaughters]

Late last year and early this I, and some others from a forum I use, did a week-by-week on Nick Cave. Wasn't a big fan before and didn't emerge from it a convert, but I did like a number of songs.

I think my favourite two were one I was familiar with - Do You Love Me? - and one I wasn't - The Hammer Song.

Those were my findings, over to Chedney Honks for the traffic and travel.

[famethrowa]

I'm really repulsed by the piano ballads, in particular the Ship thing and Into My Arms (Nick becoming Elton to M. Hutchence's Princess Di, ew), just terrible mawkish nursery tunes and lines that don't scan, trying hard to be Tom Waits. That said, I very much enjoy the wild rocky stuff, so I'm going to say Figure Of Fun.

[sevendaughters]

I'm really repulsed by the piano ballads, in particular the Ship thing and Into My Arms (Nick becoming Elton to M. Hutchence's Princess Di, ew), just terrible mawkish nursery tunes and lines that don't scan, trying hard to be Tom Waits. That said, I very much enjoy the wild rocky stuff, so I'm going to say Figure Of Fun.

what do you think of the haunted ambient cloud Actual Death ballads of his recent years?

[Dirty Boy]

Mercy Seat for me too, or Curse Of Milhaven for one that hasn't been mentioned yet.

I always liked Stranger Than Kindness from YFMT, but i think either Mick Harvey or Blixa Bargeld wrote the music for that.

Only really listen to the Birthday Party these days. Couldn't abide Ghosteen at all.

[holyzombiejesus]

I like O'Malleys Bar as I used to play it on my way to work when I hated everyone in the office and imagined killing them all. Also have happy memories of listening to Straight To You whilst not wanting to kill an office full of colleagues.

[Oz Oz Alice]

For Old Testament Cave, it's got to be Tupelo: real hairs standing up on the back of the neck stuff whether it be 80s Nick all strung out on heroin as Mick Harvey frantically tries to keep everything on as even a keel as possible or Nick in his early 60s looking and sounding better than ever as Warren Ellis coaxes skree out of his loops and violin. Barry Adamson can lay claim to two of the great basslines: this and The Light Pours Out of Me.

For New Testament Cave, it's probably Hollywood from Ghosteen: a sister song in a way weaving the story of a dead child through religious lore and apocalyptic weather conditions. The closing falsetto outline of the Buddhist parable about Kisa and her baby chokes me up almost every time I hear it. I didn't like Ghosteen at first but now I think its his masterpiece.

Honourable mention for Deep In The Woods or Wild World but The Birthday Party was always five (then four) misfits pulling in different directions and beauty from chaos rather than the backing band The Bad Seeds are. Nick was important yes but just as important as Rowland or Tracey.

[sweeper]

Yeah, Hollywood is astonishing.

Also, Higgs Boson Blues.

And Red Right Hand is probably an easy one to go for, but what a great song it is.

[FerriswheelBueller]

I used to love all the angry ones like Tupelo, O’Malley’s Bar, Stagger Lee etc (and no one else does that kind of grinning fury like Cave) but I increasingly prefer the sparse electronic stuff on Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen. There’s probably all sorts of personal reasons (I won’t go into) for that though.

Saw him play in Toronto and he was terrific. He did the old “climb into the audience and run round the place yelping away into a wireless mic” routine which made the whole thing feel a bit dangerous because in the dark you never knew where this snarling Australian would crop up next. He did a version of Magneto literally 2 rows in front of us (we were in the cheap seats - is that why he went there? Who knows) which has since become my favourite bit of his newer stuff.

Love old Mr Cave.

[Aleister Growley]

Black Crow King - best original I reckon

Jesus Met The Woman At The Well - best cover. Or maybe Plain Gold Ring.

[Pink Gregory]

Does Grinderman count as Nick Cave?

Palaces of Montezuma is just instantly pleasing.

[DrGreggles]

The Ship Song, but I love that Kylie duet too.

[ElTwopo]

When I First Came to Town

[chveik]

you've turned off replies

[Prison Biscuits]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3Q10T0g1ak

[peanutbutter]

It's the Mercy Seat, and by a big margin too. He's got a lot of quite good songs but that's the only one that absolutely blows me away. It's really the only time he was as interesting as his fans make him out to be. Probably prompted his shift towards more ballads and mellower stuff cos there was no way he was gonna top the Mercy Seat.

Never got the Ship Song at all, I kinda get Into My Arms even though it does nothing for me but the Ship Song just falls really flat.

[FerriswheelBueller]

I can see why people like the rising pop ballad of The Ship Song, but whenever I listen to it I get a creeping feeling that it could be Ronan Keating and we’d be none the wiser.

[Oz Oz Alice]

A large part of the reason I love The Ship Song is just that, in a way. It's a big, widescreen technicolour ballad and in fact in the era of saccharine boybands flooding the charts it could easily have been a Christmas number one for Westlife or, you know, it could've been picked for Will Young to sing and it wouldn't alienate their core audience of pre-teens and grannies with its sweeping melody. You can imagine them rising from stools and walking towards the camera in unison hand on heart as they sing "We make a little history, baby, every time you call around". All this is true but it doesn't demean the song itself which is about a love so desperate and irrational that he's asking the object of his affections to set dogs upon him and muttering darkly of "removing your wings" to allow them to fly. It's just a huge ridiculous pop song that you could give to The Righteous Brothers (60 years ago) or you could give it to Atomic Kitten (20 years ago) or you could give it to The Saturdays and it'd still be a great, incredibly melodramatic love song. And very adolescent in a sense in its "love conquers all" sturm and drang. I think he missed a trick not releasing it as a Christmas single, because it sounds like a Christmas song with the bells and massed backing vocals and all.

[shagatha crustie]

It's the ballads for me Clive

'Hallelujah,' 'Fifteen Feet of...,' 'Jubilee Street'

[shagatha crustie]

But I do have two separate very close friends who are HUGE fans and at least one of them says it's The Mercy Seat.