Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Boatman's Call

2011 Remastered Edition The year 1997 began for Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds with the release of "Into My Arms," the introductory single that heralded their impending album The Boatman's Call. For fans familiar with the band's output of nearly a decade and a half, the sound and character of this release – intimate, naked, minimalistic devotional music – came largely as a shock. A traumatic separation, rehab, remorse and a brief but intense love affair had all kept Cave quite unsettled and uneasy for three years running. Whatever reservations Nick might normally have held about the aesthetic acceptability of directly baring one's soul in song, psychologically the time was clearly ripe for him to submit such a work. "Looking back it probably should have been a solo album," admits Mick Harvey. "We knew that at the time." "Yeah, I agree," says Cave. The musical correlative to Nick's bared-to-the-bone approach to the lyrics demanded an equally spare use of The Bad Seeds and the array of