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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Paint a Portrait of a Grieving Parent on 'Ghosteen'

The anguish a parent feels for losing their child is harrowing and Ghosteen masterfully captures Nick Cave's grief and spiraling rumination on mortality.

                                      
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The anguish a parent feels for losing their child is harrowing and Ghosteen masterfully captures Nick Cave's grief and spiraling rumination on mortality.

Intense and dramatically profound, Nick Cave's performance allows fans to worship at the feet of a preacher.

Much of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' 16th album was created before tragedy struck Nick Cave's family, but that loss permeates through every track.

They are Serge Gainsbourg's songs, but it's Harvey’s show, and he does a fine job as frontman throughout.

Judging from the devastation wrought from last year's Hurricane Sandy and a number of other terrifying natural tragedies, Mother Nature is regarding humanity with a lot of ill will.

Imitations proves once again that even after four decades in the game, Mark Lanegan is not an artist content to conform to expectations, but one that will continue crossing borders to indulge his muse.

In the fall of 2004, I was working at WRAS-Atlanta, Album 88, and was on the graveyard shift. I was new to the world of college radio and my mind was being blown every day by bands I had never heard of.

Another promising cut from next month's Push the Sky Away.

Kylie Minogue’s new album 'The Abbey Road Sessions' features re-recordings of a number of her past hit songs, including this duet from 1996′s 'Murder Ballads' with Nick Cave. More new tunes from the record are streaming on Kylie Minogue's Facebook.

Much like the film for which it serves as the sonic backdrop for, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' original songs and cover versions are both idiosyncratic and traditional. Those two may seem like good musical bedfellows, but here they're left to be a bland, unmemorable set of bluegrass songs.

Bon Iver sings about robot dogs. Nick Cave does a wicked Tom Waits impression. Erykah Badu covers Roberta Flack... in space. Even with its flaws, it's hard to think of a more memorable disc released this year than Heady Fwends.

Just as Cave’s Grinderman has toyed with the idea of how older artists should behave, Grinderman 2 RMX toys with the concept of the remix and proves that reworkings need not be danceable, they just need to appear a bit bruised.

From contemplative science fiction to macabre stop-motion, the 2000s brought forth some excellent film scores that are worth listening to long after the credits have rolled. With this year's Academy Awards just behind us, Sound Affects looks at the top movie scores from the 21 century so far.

An EP that should've been a single.

Dark and sweeping, Garland of Bottle Flies takes 13Ghosts to places they've never been.

First effort from a deep, dark soul.

Governments tend to take on their worst form, to devolve to their most horrific manifestation, when they kill artists. Artists look out into the horrors of the world, and inevitably, the horrors sometimes reach back.

Don't bother reading this review. Just go out and buy the record. Y'all should probably put some clothes on first, though.

The Road offers emotive compositions that are a pleasure to contemplate in their own lone, spectacular depression.

If you Google the phrase “Criterion has done it again”, you will get 37,500 hits. I have a hunch that now that Wings of Desire is back on the streets, this number is going to increase significantly.

Director John Hillcoat talks to PopMatters about the hazards of being intimidated by legends, the funny side of cannibalism and Viggo Mortensen's sweet tooth as his adaptation of the seminal apocalyptic novel The Road hits theaters.

They might kick me out of the feminist club for this, but I love murder ballads, even the ones in which women get killed—though, to be fair, I am an equal opportunity advocate when it comes to a good killing narrative.

On his 14th studio album, Australia’s crown prince of goth manifests into its unheralded king of rock.

Music to get shot by Casey Affleck to.

As the Bad Seeds prepare to release their new album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, Burt considers the mythological symbols in Nick Cave's songs and what they say about the time we live in.

The side project of Nick Cave and selected Bad Seeds is lecherous, primal, nihilistic and marvellous.

Much more than a diversionary side project, Grinderman is a foul mouthed, frequently hilarious discharge of utterly essential midlife-crisis rock and roll.

Lian Lunson's concert documentary, Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, works against itself, with too many gushing tributes and not enough Cohen.