I was talking to JC from the Vinyl Villain about this album and said ‘You know, they’re starting to remind me just a little bit of Snow Patrol’ and instead of punching me then and there, he enthusiastically replied in the affirmative.  Now Snow Patrol weren’t always shit: Songs For Polar Bears was patchy, but a really interesting album, and When It’s All Over We Still Have to Clear Up was just excellent.  Nevertheless I kind of expected howls of outrage – being compared to Snow Patrol?  Not an insult?  When did that happen?

To be clear, despite knowing that Snow Patrol weren’t always crap, I can’t think of a nice way to be compared to them at the moment.  This is not a compliment.  What Midnight Organ Fight sounds like to me is a band warming up for their massive stadium rock record, and ascension to Radio 1 royalty.

Basically, this is a bigger, smoother, softer, rounder sound and what I was drawn to on the first album was the choppiness, the atonality and the idiosyncrasy. A lot of this has been comprehensively rubbed off this time around the block, and I think the album suffers for it.  Not to say for a second that they have lost their ability to write a good tune, nor a rousing indie anthem, because they haven’t.

The Midnight Organ Fight is still chock-full of really good songs, so don’t let me pretend that I think it’s crap, because I don’t.  But what it isn’t as far as I’m concerned is compelling, unlike Sing the Greys.  I am listening to it as we speak, and fuck me, it is Snow Patrol, it really is.

In terms of the changes it reminds me a little of The Futureheads actually, whose second album had all the rough edges smoothed off and was only rescued by the quality of the tunes.  A lot of this is musically just not that interesting, but fortunately the songs are decent so it’s okay. It feels strange to be criticising an album where I don’t actually dislike any of the songs, but I listen to this and enjoy it, and I wonder whether or not in six months’ time I will feel the urge to rush and put this album on the stereo and I am pretty much certain that I won’t.

Frightened Rabbit – Poke (This one’s a bit special)
Frightened Rabbit – The Modern Leper
Frightened Rabbit – Good Arms vs. Bad Arms

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Hmm. It’s quite possible you might listen to this and find yourself choking on the sweetness.

I find I have to tread very carefully with music like this because it slips very subtly from the unbearable (Kate Nash) to the brilliant (Ruth Theodore). Where in between these two extremes does the lovely Lucy sit? Well certainly much closer to Ruth, although she definitely seems to be more of a flibbertigibbet that that fine lady. She’s not as witty as Emmy the Great, who I kind of like, but generally more wistfully melancholy, which brings a dreamy sweetness to her music which neither Emmy nor Ruth ever seem to quite manage.

I’m not trying to be clever with the first name terms here, either, it just seems way, way more approriate for this kind of faux-naïf waifstrel persona.

I think that when it comes down to it what makes the two songs I was sent charming and engaging might have a lot to do with the fiddle work. She’s working with the Earlies at the moment, which may explain that, and I believe Emmy the Great is also doing some work them as well. Most of the pathos of the music seems to lie in there; it’s a sort of gently nostalgic sound, shot through with something of an old time American folk vibe and is genuinely gorgeous.

Lucy’s Opinion is out shortly, but her previous single Red Red Wine (mercifully no, not that Red Red Wine) is available for purchase from her site, and the one before that, King’s Cross, can be found on Alcopop. I think my recommendation here has to be a little qualified. Lucy hasn’t recorded all that many songs just yet, so it’s hard to tell where she’s going from here. Any closer to Nashworld and I think I will lose interest pretty much immediately, but if she continues to play with that wistfully sad fiddle and keeps from being too pretty (musically of course, I don’t care what she looks like) then I reckon she has the potential to be very good indeed.

Lucy & the Caterpillar – Beans on Toast
Lucy & the Caterpillar – I Don’t Want Your Stupid Crisps

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I think Nick Cave finishes a whisker below Tom Waits in my personal pantheon of musical heroes. I think. It’s bloody close.

If I were to really have to come down on one side of that argument or another I think it might end up being on the basis that I think Cave has taken marginally more missteps over the course of his career, but then that’s hardly a cut-and-dried assertion. I don’t know.

One difference is that for all the prospect of a chat and a cuppa with Tom Waits would terrify me, I would really rather avoid the same with Mr. Cave. For all that for the most part I worship his artistic output, personally he seems like a right tosser; pretentious, vain, and quite incredibly full of himself. I’m not saying that this is how he is as a person exactly, but it is very much how he comes across to me, and I can’t imagine much good would come of meeting the man – a few too many images to be destroyed that I would prefer to keep intact thank you.

Of course, without that impossibly grandiose attitude his music would never be so good and his live show would be a shadow of its strutting, messianic self, so in wishing it away you’d be stripping the emperor of his clothes. As it is, you just have to accept it as a fundamental part of the pantomime, sit back and enjoy. And if you can do that, then the Bad Seeds’ live show is just scorching. Warren Ellis leaps about at the front like a demented hobo, torturing his violin in a manner that would thin the lips of a classical purist at fifty paces.

Musically, I am reminded of two things: firstly, what a genius this man is. The set list is peppered with old classics like Tupelo and Papa Won’t Leave You Henry, but for the most part songs are drawn from his most recent album Dig, Lazarus Dig. This is the second thing of which I am reminded: a lot of this album really isn’t very good. There are exceptions – Night of the Lotus Eaters, We Call Upon the Author and Dig, Lazarus Dig are just brilliant – but a lot of the others just don’t cut the mustard, especially when surrounded by his older material.

It works very well as a set list though, and this is one of tightest groups you will ever see play live, odd assortment of mad, lecherous old bastards though they may be. And what a brilliant, driven, raging performance for a group of duffers in their 50s. The Rolling Stones had long since given up by this point.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – I Let Love In
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – We Call Upon the Author
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Tupelo