Abattoir Blues / The Lyre Of Orpheus

In truth, a couple tracks could have been cut to turn this into an epic single-disc release of huge proportions, but it's still the best work that Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds have done since Murder Ballads.

Two masterpieces. [Dec 2004, p.158]

Ambitious and uneven.

The kind of boiling, roiling blues the Bad Seeds haven't cooked up in years. [Nov 2004, p.131]

And with so much music, some cuts solidly fail, and some stand up to the best in the Bad Seeds canon.

A fragrant bouquet of melody, light, love and naughtiness wrapped in an unfamiliar joie de vivre.

While the first offering holds a quite tangible anger and general gloom within, 'The Lyre of Orpheus is a much more mellow affair, contemplating existentialism and the like.

The Bad Seeds have not made a record this ambitious, well, ever, and the results are rewarding, thoughtful and challenging.

He gets all beautiful on your ass for the Orpheus portion of this double-disc set, then explodes with a pounding intensity on Abattoir Blues that'll knock your socks off.

Cave... remains a singular sensation. [29 Oct 2004, p.69]

This is not Cave's best work by any means, but these songs do showcase his impressive range as a lyricist, performer and musician. [#12, p.100]

Cave's songwriting chops and incisive lyrics have, if anything, grown stronger.

The scope and breadth is startling. [Oct 2004, p.94]

This is murderously good stuff. [25 Sep 2004, p.64]

Aside from the power of the music and lyrics, the set draws on Cave’s compelling persona: part priest, part sideshow barker--crooning one moment and eviscerating the next. While this has always been the core of his talent, on Abattoir/Lyre it is particularly rich and rewarding.

It would be foolish, however, to think that you could get through a Nick Cave project this ambitious without a few clunkers. At least here Cave's missteps occur when his reach exceeds his grasp, and the songs that fail manage to do so dramatically rather than boringly. [average of scores of 78 for 'Abattoir' and 74 for 'Orpheus']

'Abattoir Blues' is weirdly full of wonderment, and - get this - 'The Lyre of Orpheus' is even more joyful! And they both kick Nocturama's arse full of buttonholes.

So fresh, so revelatory, so alive.

Both [discs] are full of surprises. [Oct 2004, p.115]

The Orpheus disc is quieter, and Blues is slightly more lewd, but taken together this may be the scariest album about panties, gorillas and bloody gods ever recorded.

Unsurprisingly, Cave's overriding thematic goal of reconciling morality with desire on Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus falls short of its mark. But with such a complex and difficult target, that's to be expected.

The Lyre Of Orpheus is effectively Abattoir spillover: more mellow, less grand in conception, but--somehow--more pretentious in execution. [Dec 2004, p.118]

Abattoir/Orpheus is not as immediate as some of Cave's previous triumphs, but you'll take pleasure in unearthing new sentiments and innuendo within its walls.

It’s easy to get over-eager about a decent album that appears after some significantly less magnificent efforts, and perhaps that’s precisely what I’ve just done. But I don’t especially care. What I hear throughout this release, and what I’m latching so strongly onto, is my own imagined version of what a Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds record should be like.

There's hardly any drop in quality over the discs' 17 tracks, and Cave maintains his ability to startle.

An entirely unique return to form.

In many ways this is his finest outing since The Boatman's Call. [#247, p.55]

As a word of warning, though, this brilliant, but lengthy double album may not be the best beginner's guide to Nick Cave. However, for anyone who is a fan of the duration of his career, this album rewards the listener with a bit of the best of everything he has to offer.

Cave has hinted at a more mature sound on the last few records; here, it comes across in richer, bolder arrangements, the result of his band's more active role in developing the songs.