Video Of The Week: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Sometimes, simple is better. So is playing to your strengths, something Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are experts at.

This song, Higgs Boson Blues, from their terrific (though not as catchy as previous releases) album Push The Sky Away is built around one simple groove, but layered and textured with multiple levels of restraint and taste captured brilliantly by directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, and cinematographer Lol Crawley.

The hirsute men comprising The Bad Seeds (currently Warren Ellis - not the comic book writer - Martin P. Casey, Conway Savage, Thomas Wylder and Jim Sclavunos) are capable of rocking out with the best of them - they are, in fact, among the best of them - but they are just as adept at holding back and letting Nick Cave unroll his storylines where they need to go.

In this case, from Robert Johnson's selling his soul to the Devil (for better guitar skills) through to current-day Geneva, home of CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) where the so-called ''God-particle'' (Higgs-Boson) was discovered, he weaves a cautionary tale that the only certainty we have about the future is death, and we will get there anyhow, no matter the path taken, and that everything in between is at best a discovery, at worst trivial (death of a pop icon, hereby represented by Miley Cyrus, pre-VMAs/naked meltdown, ironically), and the middle just tragic (the fatal shooting of Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis).

All told through a golden voice meant to lure nubile young females into dark places.

Video Of The Week: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds were back in town this week, playing an hour and a half songs where the dark crooner once again mystified and hypnotized a sell-out crowd at Metropolis with an energetic performance, backed by one of the tightest bands in the world, which is why I decided to feature one of his live videos (though the sound is from the studio version) this week, Get Ready For Love, from Abattoir Blues (disc one of the Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus double album).

I prefer his Murder Ballads album, for sure, and his late-1980s stuff, but on any given record, there will be 5 songs I'll permanently add to my Eternal Playlist on all music devices, sometimes more. You just can't go wrong with this modern poet.

Video Of The Week: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

A little over 4 years ago, I treated myself to a very good Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds show at one of my favourite venues, Metropolis (in Montréal). Nick Cave's music has been a staple of most of my playlists (first on cassettes, then CDs, now in mp3 players) since the mid-nineties, as I got into him and his songwriting style in my teens; I'm not sure I would have liked his earlier band The Birthday Party when they were active and I was very young, but I do listen to them now as well.

Many of the things he touches turn to gold, although some of his artsier endeavours such as 2004's double-album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus seem a bit too gimmicky for me, and I don't turn to them unless I feel I specifically want to, unlike, say, this week's featured song, Red Right Hand, which I randomly insert in all of my playlists.

It's a song that's been overused, particularly in film (he could probably retire on the strength of this song's royalties alone), the version most people have heard in the movie Hellboy was actually performed by Pete Yorn; if you like cheese and odd covers, you might also enjoy Frank Bennett's version from Five O'Clock Shadow, which also contains a ridiculously overblown version of Pearl Jam's Betterman.

Without further ado...