{"id":40892,"date":"2008-05-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/dig-lazarus-dig\/"},"modified":"2008-05-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-15T00:00:00","slug":"dig-lazarus-dig","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/dig-lazarus-dig\/","title":{"rendered":"Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s really no one as charismatically maniacal in rock music today as Nick<\/st1:placename> Cave<\/st1:placename><\/st1:place>, who at 50, backed by the crunching beats of The Bad Seeds, still seems to reign unchallenged over the Underworld with his lascivious, hyperliterate lyrics and the unmistakable growl of his vocals. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, <\/i>Cave\u2019s fourteenth studio album with the Bad Seeds, swaggers through Biblical allusions, black-edged Americana, and the Odyssey<\/i> with a biting wit and the loose, staggering garage rhythms that have made him so enduring and alluring over the past decades.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The album launches off in a firestorm with its lead single, \u201cDig, Lazarus, Dig!!!,\u201d which reimagines Lazarus, nicknamed Larry, being resurrected and making his way through New York, whose downward spiral Cave recounts with a sort of lurid glee: \u201cHe ended up like so many of them do\/back on the streets of New York City\/In a soup queue, a dopefiend, a slave, then prison, then the madhouse, then the grave\/Oh, poor Larry,\u201d he sings, tongue firmly in cheek, all the elements seeming to crash together in an unhinged, upbeat track that\u2019s all the more memorable for its misery. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

The grinding guitars and uncontrolled rhythms reappear on \u201cToday\u2019s Lesson,\u201d Cave\u2019s oddly endearing love story between Mr. Sandman who \u201clikes to congregate around the intersection of Janie\u2019s jeans\/Mr. Sandman the inseminator, opens her up like a love letter and enters her dreams,\u201d the tale told with the title track\u2019s sense of infectious irony, fierce guitars and strong baseline. Next up, \u201cMoonland\u201d takes a turn for the sinister with its lean backing and overriding sense of longing: \u201cI\u2019m not your favorite lover,\u201d comes Cave\u2019s deepened, ominous croon over the slight dashes of percussion, his lyrics creating an aching, spare ballad that leads in nicely to the harrowing, hard-edged blackness and deceptively subtle instrumentation of \u201cNight Of The Lotus Eaters.\u201d\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Cave\u2019s ravings are at their best when allowed to unfold and erupt on epic, shapeshifting tracks like \u201cWe Call Upon The Author\u201d and the album\u2019s closer, \u201cMore News From Nowhere.\u201d The former is a smoldering metafictional rocker that namedrops Bukowski and Berryman while punning on Hemingway and vacuum cleaners (\u201cI feel like a vacuum cleaner\/a complete sucker!\u201d) and slipping in \u201cmyxomatoid,\u201d \u201cjejune,\u201d and the song\u2019s harried final proclamation, \u201cProlix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can\u2019t fix!\u201d <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, \u201cMore News From Nowhere,\u201d slated to be the album\u2019s second single, brings the disc to a haunting, Homeric close as Cave gracefully mixes episodes from the Odyssey<\/i> with tales of women from his life, all set to shambling, more muted instrumentation and the not-quite regretful refrain, \u201cIt\u2019s getting strange in here\/Yeah, it\u2019s getting stranger every year.\u201d <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! <\/i>is one of those unclassifiable, uncontainable albums that\u2019s all the more entertaining for its rip-roaring insanity. Nick<\/st1:placename> Cave<\/st1:placename><\/st1:place> may be the devil, but taking a detour through hell has never been so rewarding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":29335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5785],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-40892","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40892"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}