Uneven, with the good ones outweighed by the less impressive or memorable. Still, the power and drama of Cave's songs has a way of coming through, even if only in traces - Adalita's "Straight to You", for example, conveys this strongly. Lisa Mitchell takes on not one but both of the big Cave ballads which have soundtracked so much for me in the past - "The Ship Song" and "Into My Arms" - and gives them fracturedly fragile readings that've taken a few listens for me to take to but which turn out to be pretty nice (the underlying quality of the songs and melodies doesn't hurt); Alex Burnett does a nice, lightly soulful pop take on the deathless "Shivers", acknowledging before doing so (these are live recordings) that it was actually penned by Rowland S Howard; Paul Kelly is as graceful as ever with his "Nobody's Baby Now".
Pretty much all of the other really totemic songs get a guernsey, though many of these do come off as askew, weaker versions of the indelible original takes - "Deanna", "From Her To Eternity", "Red Right Hand", "The Mercy Seat", "Do You Love Me", "Where The Wild Roses Grow" (this one works quite well - Alex Burnett in a much lower register than for "Shivers" and Lanie Lane), even "Nick The Stripper".
Anyway, I wouldn't say I've ever been a particularly huge Nick Cave fan, but there've been times when I've taken his music quite to heart, and to greater or lesser extents it's always been there somewhere in the background - he certainly deserves a tribute of this kind.
Pretty much all of the other really totemic songs get a guernsey, though many of these do come off as askew, weaker versions of the indelible original takes - "Deanna", "From Her To Eternity", "Red Right Hand", "The Mercy Seat", "Do You Love Me", "Where The Wild Roses Grow" (this one works quite well - Alex Burnett in a much lower register than for "Shivers" and Lanie Lane), even "Nick The Stripper".
Anyway, I wouldn't say I've ever been a particularly huge Nick Cave fan, but there've been times when I've taken his music quite to heart, and to greater or lesser extents it's always been there somewhere in the background - he certainly deserves a tribute of this kind.
