Sorry, but I have to challenge this as the two are not comparable. With a Cezanne (or any painting) a source of truth exists which is the original art work that (if you’re lucky enough) you can see in the flesh where nothing exists between it and your eyeballs.
An album on the other hand has no objective source of truth. Yes, there is the recording which is immutable and the same for all but we can’t experience it direct; it requires an interpretive medium (i.e. audio equipment) to relay the information into a soundwave that we can hear. This variable means that the music is different for everyone and obfuscates what the source of truth may be. The only way to have an objective form of an album is if it could only be listened to with a fixed hardware set-up, i.e. it was sold with a stereo of some sort that forced the listener to hear the album only through that equipment and the artist proclaimed that was the one and only way to experience it.
If the end-user then went and swapped out different components to change the sound, then, and only then could you argue the listener was deviating from the artist’s true intent.
Hmmm, on reflection that does sound rather snobbish! What I am trying to say is that 99% of people listen to music on devices other that “hi-fi”. Why are we all here on this forum? Because we want to hear music in it’s full glory with all it’s nuances and our systems allow us to do that in a way other devices never can. At the end of the day, for me, the music comes first, not the SQ (bad music will always be bad no matter how well produced it is, and good music will always be good even if production values are not what we would like).
It would be interesting if artists explained why they chose to present an album in a certain way but they rarely talk about such things; ie, why do some artists allow their music to be brickwalled?
I was about to go “THAT is not early Cave!” and then I realised it is just me also getting older
But that is exactly the example I was thinking of this morning. That is probably the heaviest album in his repertoire before life pulled the rug out from under his feet, which perfectly illustrates how things have changed before and after, I think. It is also not my most listened-to Cave album but it is a lot easier to consume for me than the offerings since Arthur passed away.
Which, once again, I fully understand.
I climbed onboard with the release of Let Love In, with Red Right Hand becoming one of my favourites of all time way before everyone found it and put in into every second film and series.
@Alley_Cat If asked I would always point people towards Let Love In as starting point, but I’d say everything from The Good Son to Push the Sky away pretty much sums up the core of his career so far.
[EDIT] Completely forgot to say, I’d also recommend the two B-Sides and Rarities albums for a great overview over his changing style over the years, plus they contains pearls you wont find on other albums, for example Time Jesum Transeuntum et Non Riverentum.
People see different things in paintings, just as they hear different things in music, and I only mentioned Cézanne because I saw a few of his paintings yesterday. The point is that one takes the picture as it is, and doesn’t say that it should have been painted in a different way. So why do we feel entitled to criticise a musician’s view on how their art should be presented through the means of a recording? It’s double standards.
I agree with the comments that this will be deliberately the sound scape that was wanted for the release . It appears although Nick Cave was involved with the mixing and production, mixing was led by David Fridmann who seems to have a distinguished sound engineering career, picking up several awards, and production by Warren Ellis, who has a distinguished career of composing and producing film scores and long time collaborator of Nick Cage… so it doesn’t look any rookies were involved.
A good replay (hifi) system should play the production as intended or as close as. Those systems that exagerate or highlight /accentuate, can sound supper for more neutral productions and can make voices shimmer etc, but can sound too much and overly detracting for ‘sculptured’ productions….
No doubt about this indeed. And I suspect in these albums where he is dealing with what happened to him, and where this one is about a return to a form a joy, he would be presenting exactly what he is feeling.
FWIW when I say I find this hard to consume it is not the sound. Sounds great to me. If is about what it is. But hey, a lot of great art has been difficult to consume, which is part of what makes it great as it is so confrontational.
No, the album was just in the inner sleeve (words one side, portrait the other). Luckily a great pressing though.
I’ll be keeping the inner outside the album as it’s a very tight fit!
Oh forget what I said about this album. Curiosity overcame me and I just listened to it again.
I was a cloth eared grump on Friday when I tried the first time, and conveniently switched off the album just before the mood changed for the second bit.
Having listened to it over the weekend. It is another wonderfully written and well-crafted release from Nick Cave. I don’t get the badly recorded comments, he has made informed choices about this and I would think making a deliberate set of decisions to add to the impact of the lyrics and music.
Will it end up as one of my favourite albums, too early to say yet, however, it is a worthy addition to his recording history,
Well, my post has been removed. Naim wrote this to me: Your post was flagged as off-topic: the community feels it is not a good fit for the topic, as currently defined by the title and the first post.
This post was flagged by the community and a staff member opted to remove it.
I wrote back: This was meant as a joke, as god means quite a lot to Nick Cave. And I think you are overreacting.
Been a Cave fan since Birthday Party and I think it’s the first time I’ve been so disappointed with a new record from him. The sound quality is awful and the autotune on
O Wow O Wow is terrible on a song that could be good without it. Final Rescue Attempt is my favorite and really good, but in general the album lacks good songs. It’s like he’s gone back to the Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus record with the gospel inspiration, but it seems unresolved
If that is the case, I’m not surprised about the negative verdicts, even if he was great in Con Air! I would be surprised about poor sound if Nick Cave had been involved however
[… quickly googling to check there is not actually a sound engineer called Nick Cage]
Well, after a second listen I just love it and want to play it again! My first Nick Cave album was Skeleton Tree and I have been both moved and impressed by everything since then. He is one of the great poets of our time. Need to investigate his back catalog further beyond Push The Sky Away.
Wanting a recording to not be compressed within an inch of its life is hardly tantamount to dictating how the artist composes their work. No one is saying that Nick should have ditched the piano and taken up the bassoon. And frankly, once you release a work of art into the wild it is fair game for the end consumer to proffer their opinion on what they experience, for good or ill. Think Death of the Author.
Anyway, I had a listen to this last night and while it’s indeed compressed to hell and back it’s still more than listenable despite the crunchiness. The album itself is pretty solid although I’ll need to give it a few more spins before landing on a solid opinion.
