Nick Cave Is Still Looking for Redemption

For someone who’s been relentlessly pegged as a doom-and-gloom merchant for the majority of his lengthy career, Nick Cave perseveres. As early as the ’70s, when he sang blatantly about suicide with his first group The Boys Next Door, the Australian-born bandleader has trawled the darkest depths of the human soul, first with the post-punk gang The Birthday Party and then, since 1983, with his longest-running concern, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. With a voice like the moan of the wind through tombstones, he’s spent decades evoking an atmosphere of decadence, profanity, and damnation. In his 21st-century side project Grinderman, he even trafficked in garage-rock sleaze.

But if one thing is spelled out on —a new, career-spanning collection of Bad Seeds songs out Friday—it’s that Cave’s artistic survival has had just as much to do with redemption. The 21-track set (although a longer aren’t sequenced chronologically, but listening to them in order of release reveals Cave’s impressive arc as an artist. As a well-curated whole, they also offer a comprehensive overview of the Bad Seeds’ violent highs and delicate lulls.