yet another Nick Cave appreciation thread

This dude has recently become my favourite singer-songwriter by far, meaning as much to me as Bob Dylan does to my parents, for several reasons:

1. The way he combines completely unrelated musical genres, e. g. the Bad Seeds' trademark cross between traditional American music and gothic post-punk... and they somehow make it work. Same thing with the weird-as-hell art punk of the Birthday Party. That's the sign of having assembled a band of people who have a good understanding of music.
2. I'm a bit of a kindred spirit to him, in that we both have the kind of fascination with American culture only a non-American can have. Seriously, a lot of his music has this kind of bizarro-Western atmosphere like Django or Alexandro Jodorowksy's El Topo. Actually, with all the weirdly used religious symbolism in the lyrics it's probably more like El Topo but on heroin instead of acid!
   
3. Unlike most other singer-songwriters except for Tom Waits, he seems to have lots of fun with constructing an image as a kind of larger-than-life character, in his case some kind of silent movie villain. He even looked like Cesare from The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari back when he was in the Birthday Party.
   
4. Since he was the boyfriend of P. J. Harvey, who is generation X's Joan Baez, he's in every aspects generation X's Bob Dylan.
5. I like music that's bizarre, dark and melodramatic. (note to self: also check out what that Tom Waits dude is doing)
   

I'm familiar with stuff from all over his career with the Bad Seeds, but working my way chronologically through it, a couple of Birthday Party songs (need to buy their albums at some point) and his film scores, but not Grinderman. I did talk to a friend who had seen them live and said it was pretty ordinary "dick rock" (as he calls it) like the stuff he listened to growing up ... given that the Saints, an old Australian punk band, is one of Nick Cave's favourite bands of all time maybe Grinderman's a tribute to them?

I also need to get around to watching both of the movies he's scored, I'm a sucker for weird and artsy westerns.

It's also the first one I heard. That one, and Let Love In, are probably his most user-friendly albums.

The Boatman's Call was a miss? What???

June wrote: I love that album, it's a beautiful, minimalist piece of work (some lovely basslines on there too) that sure, sorta moved away from what he's been doing so far, but gosh, desperate love songs? Love that!

Toaster Mantis wrote:    How are desperate love songs unusual for Nick Cave up until then? There's lots of them all through his discography before The Boatman's Call. What? Hasn't he been like the longest lasting member other than Captain Caveman himself?

Nick's a genius, and here's the proof (or about half of it, actually):

Oh gosh, I hadn't watched that vid in years.