Nocturama
- Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds
- Band Name: Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds
- Record Label: Epitaph
- Release Date: Feb 11, 2003
- Critic Score
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This journey to Nocturama's not to be missed. [March 2003, p.88]
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90At first listen a morose rumination on the many shapes of love, the album slowly unfurls as a grand, almost gothic epic of vast proportion and luxurious significance.
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90This is one of Cave's best album in years, if not an immediate candidate for a career highlight.
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83Often funeral-march slow, but there are also flashes of passionate energy.
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It's what The Velvet Underground would've sounded like if they'd been psychopaths. With a heart.
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80As ever with the great man, this is a record that rewards the attentive, and repetitive listener.
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80Piano ballads and muscular thrash that hearken back to his days with proto-goth ghoulfathers the Birthday Party. [#13, p.91]
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80Cave has managed to move away from the stifling atmosphere and the false captive environment of No More Shall We Part and somehow create a Cave world where The Bad Seeds can indeed stretch, howl, riff, sniff, grind and bark with a freedom unheard on record since 1993's Live Seeds. [Album of the Month, Feb 2003, p.84]
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80Cave proves himself to be a continually fascinating and vital songwriter.
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Cave's molasses ballads take you to a warm spot where the big bad world's cynicism gets disabled and the numb parts thaw.
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80Nocturama feel[s] messy, unpredictable, and even a little dangerous--qualities Cave's music hasn't had in far too long.
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74But with two (admittedly gigantic) exceptions, Nocturama reneges on its promise-- something's still missing from most of these tracks.
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70At times, 'Nocturama' feels like he's trying too hard. Some of the ballads suffer this way, as if Cave's straining to recapture the gravitas of 'The Boatman's Call' without excessive revelations or dramatic contrivance.
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70This is his conscious attempt to inject a sense of urgency probably not heard on a Bad Seeds album since 1994's Let Love In. [Mar 2003, p.96]
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Nocturama is as slight and as pretty as a walk through the snow on a sunny Winter day.
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Most people this pretentious or literary don't rock so hard or write tunes so good.
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Mostly in the quieter mode of his past few efforts, Nocturama presents songs of faith and devotion in the face of doubt, again demonstrating his newfound gift for understatement and the smoky croon.
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68Another semi-spotty release.
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The missing link between Murder Ballads and Boatman's Call.
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60Nick Cave, no mistake about it, is still a major talent, and Nocturama isn't nearly as bad a mid-career flop as Lou Reed's Mistrial or David Bowie's Never Let Me Down.... But nevertheless, this is also far from essential Nick Cave, as most longtime fans will immediately discern.
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60Trouble is, they're often only half-good songs. [Feb 2003, p.94]
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There is flatness where once there was majesty; there is garbage where once there was gold.
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Everything is predictable and sounds like something Cave has done before. The Bad Seeds' edges are smoothed over by the too-slick production; Cave's lyrics are not provocative or funny or much of anything worth hearing.
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50Nocturama isn't an awful record, just a problematic one, mostly due to the fact that the spontaneous studio atmosphere under which he's trying to operate doesn't allow for the careful crafting that bore his prior masterpieces.
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Nocturama isn't the weakest album in Nick Cave's canon, but it's far from being a particularly good one either.
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40There's little to set the sombre half-tones of the Cave and Seed world alight with suspicous glimmers. [#228, p.59]
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