Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

My rather eccentric music taste makes me kind of easy to pin down, I think. Witness: there are exactly four artists that currently release records that I actually get a little excited about. Those four artists are Underworld, Tom Waits, Einstürzende Neubauten, and today’s topic, Nick Cave (w/ or w/o the Bad Seeds.)

With all of these artists, there’s some releases I like and some I don’t. I suppose Underworld is the most consistent; I can’t, offhand, think of any record I like less than any other. More about particular songs, and really only Bruce Lee when you get down to it. There are plenty of Tom Waits records I can’t stand at all, and Neubauten, well, I don’t listen to much prior to Tabula Rasa any more, probably because I’m getting old. I really enjoy their last few albums, though, and the newest has been getting heavy play lately.

Same with Nick Cave. I’m not one of those slobbering types that thinks he’s Bela Legosi Incarnate or any of that bullshit. For the albums I do own, there are only three or four tracks I actually can stand on each, with the exception of Grinderman, which I like all the way through, and Murder Ballads, which I like except when a chick starts singing. With this in mind, I look forward to Tuesday’s release of Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! From the video, and the fact that the entire album is on Myspace (here…) it seems that the rather abstracted approach to writing/recording explored on the Grinderman album has been extrapolated in to the whole Bad Seeds lineup quite nicely. His albums take a little while to grow on me, but I give him a chance, which is more than I can say for about 99.999999999% of the new music I hear these days.