Kicking Against the Pricks

Submitted by Martin Lewis on 16 February 2013 - 10:03pm

Cover:

Artist:

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

album-ID:

a_46

Nationality:

Australia

Year:

1 986

Release-year:

0000

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

Muddy Water*I’m Gonna Kill That Woman*Sleeping Annaleah*Long Black Veil*Hey Joe*The Singer*Black Betty*Running Scared*All Tomorrow’s Parties*By The Time I Get To Phoenix*The Hammer Song*Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart*Jesus Met The Woman At The Well*The Carnival Is Over

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Bean

meeting-ID:

m_18

Now-num:

Spotify-URL:

0YzRmEoCWPd4yrnNP2n1t3

Grooveshark-URL:

Kicking+Against+The+Pricks/418674

Short-title:

pricks

nominator-ID:

u_22

Meeting-date:

Monday, 23 February 2009

MusicBrainz-URL:

37be9e09-e5d5-3337-bde0-13382a0461cf

Wikipedia-URL:

Kicking_Against_the_Pricks

Spotify-link-type:

album

Discogs-URL:

Nick-Cave-The-Bad-Seeds-Kicking-Against-The-Pricks/master/17164

Allmusic-URL:

kicking-against-the-pricks-mw0000189357

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108

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117

reviewers-IDs data

-22-

-13-

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80

reviewed by

Martin Lewis

You'll enjoy it if you haven't heard the original tracks much.

4-10-12

This is an album of cover versions most of which I had not heard the original versions of. On this basis I really enjoyed it. Well crafted with NCs trademark black humour. Then I came along to the Feb meeting and you guys opened my eyes. I haven't listened to it since.
50

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

I enjoy the man's style, but this isn't one of his good works - I hadn't even realised it was a covers album! He is capable of writing and playing beautiful pop music, but it rarely comes through here.
38

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

The judge said “Son / what is your alibi?”

13-14

3-5-6-9-10

I wouldn't claim to be a fan of Nick Cave, I’ve never seen his appeal and it’s not apparent to me on this album either. His music has very much a backwards-looking sound (not just here), rather than being someone looking to open up new areas of musical exploration. It feels almost like it’s a branding exercise going on, like he’s earnestly trying to tick certain stylistic boxes.

The low point for me was the version of Hey Joe, covered somewhat more successfully by Jimi Hendrix, some 20 years earlier. This really was a turgid interpretation of a piece that worked successfully for Jimi for exactly the reason it doesn’t work here – it has an extremely simple structure, over which you might use the space and freedom to explore themes in a loose, inventive and creative way, or alternatively you could just rasp drearily, repetitively and tunelessly for the duration. Take your pick. I feel I must question the judgement of a band taking on some of the more famous pieces in the pop canon, seemingly without really working out any sort of game plan in advance. It’s fine for a crappy pub band to play some well known songs just cos they like them and cos they’ve figured out the chords but you’ve got to offer something more than that if you want yourself and your artistic processes to be taken seriously. I can’t see what he is adding to our understanding of these songs, what do they give us beyond the originals?

There are some good songs on here, but it’s an album of cover versions so of course there should be, but hardly any of the pieces are well delivered. And it’s crammed full of tiresome references to the hangman’s gallows, murder, gaols, drugs, death, blah blah blah. If you felt this was delivered convincingly, intelligently or even ironically that would be one thing but I can’t see it. He’s just trying desperately hard to prove how dark and messed up he is. He hasn’t succeeded and even if he had, so what?
28

reviewed by

Richard Norbury

Utter rubbish. And very annoying.