Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
No More Shall We Part (Reprise)
Reviewed by Christopher Gray, Fri., April 27, 2001
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
No More Shall We Part (Reprise)
For Nick Cave, no day would be complete without raising a fist and cursing the heavens for their failure to send him into the world as a member of the Bronte family. The goth-poet of choice for those who find Leonard Cohen too damn chipper, Cave's best work routinely grapples with God, lust, wickedness, despair -- all the things that make 19th-century novels such a hoot. Unfortunately, it appears he exorcised all his worst demons on 1996's sumptuously squalid Murder Ballads, because No More Shall We Part is almost dishearteningly placid. Tender, even, at times. Once a reliable source for all the fire and brimstone one could possibly want in a songwriter, Cave now seems content to belly up to the piano and warble (albeit in an extra-thick Aussie double baritone) harmless love songs like "As I Sat Sadly By Her Side" and "Love Letter." True, it's hard to begrudge anyone, even Cave, a little happiness, but it seems to have come at the expense of the acid-tongued sensibility that made "Red Right Hand" so chilling. "Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow" seethes and surges with a little of the old bile, and the fairy-like harmonies of backup vocalists Kate and Anna McGarrigle lend an almost foreboding serenity to many of the songs, but overall, No More Shall We Part makes an all too convincing case that rock's onetime Edgar Allan Poe has become an old softie.