By the mid 1980s popular music was settling back into the doldrums from which punk had rescued it in the late 1970s and once again the airwaves were flooded with formulaic dreck. All of which meant that when Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds released Kicking Against The Pricks, a collection that featured covers of mainly old and traditional country tunes, it really stuck out. This was long before movies like Oh Brother Where Art Thou brought about a revival of interest in old time country music, so hearing anybody performing something like "Long Black Veil" was an anomaly, even on country music radio stations.
Yet, here was this collection of guys who looked like your atypical new wave band, skinny ties and tight pants etc, playing a mixture of old time county and blues standards, and not trying to make them sound contemporary. Instead, they were playing nearly straight versions with no signs of this being some sort of send up. For those who missed this recording the first time around, Mute Records has reissued a special two disc set. Disc one is a CD containing all the original martial plus a couple of previously unreleased tracks from the same sessions.
The second disc is a DVD and it not only contains all the tracks on the first disc re-mastered into 5.1 surround sound, it also includes a documentary shot specifically for this release featuring contemporaries of the band talking about the disc. The DVD also allows you to download mp3 versions of the bonus audio tracks, the documentary, and a video of Nick Cave singing "The Singer", made famous by Johnny Cash.
While the documentary is interesting enough in that it provides a context for the music and some insights into the process which the band went through in creating the recording, it's still just a collection of talking heads which becomes a little tedious. Anyway, it's the music that's important, not what a bunch of people most of us have never heard of think about it. For the music is brilliant from beginning to end. Somehow Cave and the Bad Seeds have managed to turn what ninety per cent of the time others have made sound like cheap sentimental crap into songs with heart which generate a genuine emotional connection to the listener.
With all apologies to Glen Campbell fans, normally listening to "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" would make me gag. It was one of the worst examples of how country music had been polished and buffed into something that could be sold at Los Vegas, and left with the emotional depth of a Hallmark card. In the hands of Nick Cave and company though the song becomes something more than you'd think possible. By stripping down the music to a bare minimum and singing as if you actually believed the lyrics, you reveal a song filled with regrets and fears that has a lot more going for it than just sentimentality.
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