NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS THE VIDEOS DVD MUTE, PLAYGROUND RELEASE: MAY 3, 2004 REVIEW: APRIL 13, 2004

It kind of feels like Christmas getting my hands on this DVD-release. A dark Christmas, yes, but a very joyous occasion nonetheless. Nick Cave is one of the great artists of the last quarter of the 20th century. To say that a collection with all the videos he and The Bad Seeds made prior to their last album "Nocturama" is less than a audio-visual gem would be ridiculous. The videos for "Where the Wild Roses Grow" – speak about gothic murder tale! – and "Loverman" – with a hypnotised Bad Seeds – are almost alone worth a buy. And then we haven’t even talked about the magnificent one take, almost erotic, video with Polly Jean Harvey for "Henry Lee" or "Into My Arms". Or the in-between video commentary by Cave, mostly, as well as Mick Harvey and Blixa Bargeld
Sadly, the longer back into the Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds history the videos go (there’s a kind of backward chronology on the DVD), the worse the quality of the videos get. Actually, videos like "In the Ghetto" and, for instance, "The Mercy Seat" are only fun to have included because of the great music and to make the collection complete, not because the videos in themselves are any good. Because they aren’t. The flick accompanying fabulous "The Weeping Song" – with Blixa and Nick rowing a boat while getting drunk, is although in it’s own way kind of funny.
But all in all, I’m sure everyone will find his or her favourite Cave-video from the 80's and 90's in here. Had the commentary been more extensive and Mute had put some extra goodies on the DVD it would have been a treasure. But the quality if the disc is good, the sound’s great and the index-page easy to navigate (a small minus, though, for not being able to view the videos without the comments before they start). So, it’s a gem and a must have in the collection of any serious fan of Nick Cave.

KALLE MALMSTEDT