Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Gather Lovely Creatures

Nick Cave spent 2016 mired in grief over the loss of his son, Arthur, and found desperately needed emotional rescue with Skeleton Tree, his 16th album with the Bad Seeds, and the Andrew Dominik-directed documentary One More Time with Feeling. The dark lord, still shattered and wounded, has assumed a reflective mood. With the assistance of Mick Harvey, Cave plunged into his archives for a massive new retrospective. Billed as the most comprehensive and thorough overview of his Cave’s career to date, Lovely Creatures: The Best of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds 1984 – 2014 will be available May 5th in a variety of CD/LP formats, courtesy of Mute Records.

“The songs we have chosen are the ones that have stuck around, for whatever reason,” Cave said in a statement. “Some songs are those that demand to be played live. Others are lesser songs that are personal favorites of ours. Others are just too big and have too much history to leave out. And there are those that didn’t make it, poor things. They are the ones you must discover by yourselves.”

The super-deluxe 3-CD edition of Lovely Creatures also includes a two-hour DVD of rare interview and performance footage and lavish hardcover book of rare photographs and essays written by current and former Bad Seeds. One More Time with Feeling, meanwhile, was released on DVD March 3rd.

Photo by Susan Moll.