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Musically, the album is a triumph from first to last.
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It's hilarious, chilling and exhilarating: further evidence of the unique and enviable position Cave finds himself in at 50.
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FilterCave's themes remain unchanged, but his songcraft prowess continues to grow, aided by the finest instrumental backing and production of any Bad Seeds album to date. [Winter 2008, p.90]
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Cave spits out his woebegone lyrics as if he were a Holy Ghost-filled preaching machine leading the world's funkiest revival meeting.
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On Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, rock, country, blues, and post-punk rhythms meld with Cave’s lyrics on sex, death, God, and America to create what could be one of his most perfect albums yet.
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He sacrifices none of his newfound momentum on the fantastic Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, his sharpest, wittiest, most resolute album in over a decade.
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What it all comes down to is that Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is a Bad Seeds record that ups the ante once again.
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Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is ultimately a rock record more than it is an ideas record, but on both counts the Seeds bring it like a band half their age.
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It’s a vital record, one that’s Nick Cave through and through, and whether he’s exploring his garage roots or his spooky, narrative tendencies it’s at all points a triumph.
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On Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, Cave weaves yet another tapestry of characters.
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Jangling Jack's back.
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The record is a less sonically abrasive affair than the album Cave released last year with his side-project Grinderman, but it teems with as many musical and lyrical ideas as ever.
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The Bad Seeds sound even edgier and more sophisticated on Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, providing a fitting pulpit for their bandleader's ravings.
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Yes, Dig bears little concept or nuance, but it more than makes up for it in raw, oozing passion.
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Even if Prince, Madonna, Paul Weller, Shane MacGowan, Ice-T and Michael Jackson got together to form a freakish supergroup, they’d struggle to make an album containing as much vitality, humour and invention as Cave and his wizened cronies have.
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The band has never sounded better, and Cave seems to have relaxed into the hysteria of his vocal style; like Elmer Gantry singing Leonard Cohen at a tent-revival.
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There's a rolling, free and expansive feel to the album as a whole that is not only one of its most attractive features, but is also the most difficult thing about it to pin down.
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While there are inevitable parallels what with one album following the last so soon, this fourteenth LP from the fluctuating-of-membership Bad Seeds is a bolder creation that its predecessor.
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MojoThe fourteenth Bad Seeds record is willfully untidy and, at times, pretty chaotic. It also rocks like crazy. [Apr 2008, p.104]
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Feral intensity abounds. [Apr 2008, p.98]
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Dig Lazarus Dig!!! delivers a platter that is both powerfully-arcane and invigoratingly-fresh, that serves as possibly Nick Cave’s best ‘main-course’ studio release with The Bad Seeds for quite some time.
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In other words--even though the mood is more menacing than morose--it’s vintage Cave.
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Q MagazineThe 50-year-old's songwriting blue streak continues on Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, a triumphant album that merits all three exclaimation marks. [Apr 2008, p.105]
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'We Call Upon the Author to Explain' goes the title of one song, but Cave offers no explanations and no justifications merely another lean, assured set of glamorously gloomy songs.
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Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! should prove an exhilarating listen for most fans of Cave's oeuvre. It has a lot of the rawness and jagged edges of a classic Bad Seeds album, hopped up with off-kilter beats and loads of loops contributed by violinist Warren Ellis.
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Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! is even more entertainingly disturbing, a rocking psycho-carnival ride (complete with swirling organ) that clearly nods to Cave's roots.
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It's not every goth-punk fiend who can celebrate his fiftieth birthday with an album as loud, filthy and brilliant as Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
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The WireDig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! sees Cave at his wittiest and most relaxed, though perhaps also most detatched. [Apr 2008, p.53]
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MagnetThe playful Dig!! Lazurus Dig!!! stands among his most mature albums. [Summer 2008, p.98]
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So, while Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is a pretty good album and as characteristically lip-smacking as Cave is capable, it’s only engaging in the details which, unfortunately, are hard to hear because Cave’s screaming something about vulvas over top.
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It’s not surprising, then, that a number of the tunes on Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! sound familiar. Besides the ones that sound like rewrites of Iggy Pop and Leonard Cohen rewrites, Cave and crew aren’t above recycling their own work--'More News From Nowhere' is just a riff on 'Deanna.'
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Under The RadarFor all its foreboding themes, Dig, Lazarus Dig!!! is melodically accessible and a very neutrally pop album. [Spriung 2008, p.74]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 75 out of 86
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Mixed: 7 out of 86
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Negative: 4 out of 86
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Feb 19, 2013
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Mar 6, 2012
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Aug 27, 2010